A higher percentage of children live in poverty now than did during the Great Recession, according to a new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation released today.
About 22% of children in the U.S. lived below the poverty line in 2013, compared with 18% in 2008, the foundation’s 2015 Kids Count Data Book reported. In 2013, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ official poverty line was $23,624 for a family with two adults and two children.
“The fact that it’s happening is disturbing on lots of levels,” Laura Speer, the associate director for policy reform and advocacy at the Casey Foundation, a nonprofit based in Baltimore, tells USA Today. “Those kids often don’t have the access to the things they need to thrive.” The foundation says its mission is to help low-income children in the U.S. by providing grants and advocating for policies that promote economic opportunity.
The report examined data from several federal agencies ranging from 2008 to 2013 to assess state-by-state trends of 16 factors of children’s well-being, including economics, education, health, and family and community. It found that one in four children—a total of 18.7 million kids—lived in low-income households in 2013; low-income families were defined as those who use more than 30% of their pretax income for housing.
However, the numbers are from 2013, and Speer says the outcome may be different now that the unemployment rate has lowered to 5.3%; it was 7.5% in June 2013. Speer says more employed parents would naturally lead to fewer impoverished kids, but she doubted it would change the number of children in low-income neighborhoods.
The report also examined racial disparities between children living in low-income households. Black, Hispanic and American Indian children were more than twice as likely to live in poverty than white children, the report says.
States in the South and Southwest continued a steady run at the bottom of the Kids Count rankings for overall child well-being, with issues including economic standing and education. According to the report, one in three children from Mississippi live in poverty. Also, 12% of teens from Mississippi and Louisiana were neither in school nor working.
