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The United States is a leader across a broad range of scientific disciplines. Our technological prowess is part of our greatness as a nation. Sadly, among the rich industrialized nations, we also lead by a substantial margin in the rate of poverty among children.

America stands as a beacon of hope and the possibility of a better life - but it is also a nation where nearly 1 in 4 children live in poverty.

The United States is no longer first in the world in upward mobility. We can reverse that trend by giving our young children an equal start in life as they begin their journey to fulfill the American Dream.

We can't end poverty if we fail to save the lives of our world's mothers.

And if you look at the reality in the United States, where you have more than 40 million people below the poverty line and 42 million on food stamps, and then you look at poverty around the world, clearly the way we're running the engine of capitalism is not serving us well.

All countries have poor people. Yet it's a very rare country which understands the indignities of poverty, while education systems maintain the status quo. The children of the elite go to the best schools and get the best jobs, not because they are the best. We're not taking advantage of the intellectual power on this planet.

Generosity has built America. When we fail to invest in children, we have to pay the cost.

Child labor and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labor of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labor to the end of time.

Poverty is not inevitable. It is a human ill that we can fight if we decide to do so together.