“The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”

Those words came in 1977 from former Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who it appears still has something to teach us when it comes to what Pennsylvania’s focus should be going forward. Because two new reports — one on the state’s youngest residents and another on its oldest — paint a less-than-comforting picture.

It’s worth pointing out that rates for childhood poverty and other economic well-being indicators in Pennsylvania are either at or below national averages. But that should be cold comfort after we also point out that America has the fifth-highest child poverty rate in the world among economically advanced nations, according to a 2014 report by the OECD.

Pennsylvania is meeting or barely clearing a very low bar when it comes to rates of child poverty and economic instability. In 2015, 513,000 children in Pennsylvania lived in poverty, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2017 data book on child well-being.

The same is true when it comes to indicators of academic success, health and strong family and community ties in children’s’ lives. You can argue that Pennsylvania is doing better than average on most counts. But it’s hard for us to celebrate that our state’s teen birthrate is “only” 18 per 1,000 (the national rate is 22 per 1,000); or that “only” 64 percent of Pennsylvania eighth graders don’t meet proficiency standards in math (the national rate is 68 percent); or that “only” 36 percent of Pennsylvania children lived in a one-parent household in 2015.

We should strive to do far better — and not just when it comes to the youngest among us. A demographic shift in recent years has taken Pennsylvania to the top of the pack for number of elderly residents.

The state now ranks fourth for the number of residents age 65 years and older (2.2 million) and the trend is expected to continue. By 2030 elderly residents will make up nearly 30 percent of Pennsylvania’s population, according to the Pennsylvania Health Care Association.

Against that backdrop comes a new scorecard from AARP that puts our state among the bottom feeders when it comes to long-term care services and other support for older and disabled adults. Pennsylvania ranks 36th — an improvement from 2014, when it was ranked 42nd by the analysis, but hardly anything to write home about.

The analysts say that the state still focuses too much on its Medicaid spending on nursing home care rather than home assistance and caregiver aid, doesn’t do enough to address overmedication among seniors, and fails to address physician shortages.

You might be asking: why bring these long-term problems to bear when Pennsylvania is struggling with pressing short-term concerns like a budget deficit, pension and addiction crises and lackluster economic growth?

The answer is that issues like poverty, education and elder care can be an antidote to those same crises.

Less poverty means less spending on social services for the poor, and perhaps more money for things like early childhood education (54 percent of young children here miss out), which would likely mean better student achievement in the long term.

Better elder care and more focus on keeping senior citizens in their homes rather than in nursing homes might help strengthen the civic and social fabric of communities and promote strong families — which in turn could result in less poverty and more secure economic and social circumstances for children.

We hope you begin to see the point — and the power of Humphrey’s words four decades ago. Pennsylvania would do well to start listening.