Children Living in Poverty
-Sources: United States CensusChildren Living in Poverty
From 1959 to 1969, the number of children under age 18 living in poverty fell dramatically, from 17.6 million to 9.7 million. The number of poor children hovered between 9.6 and 10.5 million between 1970 and 1979, and then grew to a peak of 15.7 million children in 1993. Since then, the number of poor children again declined to a low of 11.6 million in 2000, before creeping up in 2001 to 11.7 million.
In 2001, 16.3% of the children in the United States lived in poverty, that is, in households with incomes below the federal poverty line (in 2001 it was $14,269 for a family of three). In 2001, African American and Hispanic children (about 30.2% of each group) were more than twice as likely to be poor as white children (13.4%).
Poverty rates rose for children in most racial and ethnic groups from 1977 until about 1982-83, and then declined for much of the 1980s. Poverty then rose again to new peaks for all groups in 1992 or 1993, reaching 47% for black children in 1992, and 41% for Hispanic children, 18% for white children, and 22% for children of all races in 1993. From 1993 to 2000, poverty rates declined for each of these groups, and then rose in 2001. The pattern for Asian children was different. Their poverty rates fell from 24% in 1987 to 16%in 1992, and then climbed to 20% in 1997 before falling to 12% in 2001.
The percentage of American children living below the nationally defined poverty level has dropped significantly since 1992. Approximately 22 percent of children living in the United States were poor in 1992 compared to roughly 16 percent in 2001. The total number of children living in poverty in 2001 was around 11.7 million, a considerable reduction from the 15.2 million children who occupied the same status only four years earlier.
-Sources: United States Census Bureau Children Under Six-Years Old
In 2001, 28.2% percent of all young children (ages 0 to 6) lived in or near poverty. From 1977 to 2001, the poverty rate for children less than six years of age grew from 18% to 19.3%. In 2001, nearly half (56%) of African American and 45.5% of Hispanic children in this age group lived below 125 percent of the poverty level.
About nine percent of America's young children live in extreme poverty, that is, in families with incomes below 50 percent of the poverty line. (In 2001, this meant below $7,134 for a family of three.) Among young children, the extreme poverty rate is growing faster than the overall poverty rate. Research indicates that extreme poverty during the first five years of life has especially harmful effects on children's future life chances compared to less extreme poverty experienced later in childhood.
In 2001, a majority of all poor young children—66.1 percent—lived with at least one parent who is employed. This was the case for 71.1% of poor Hispanic children under the age of six, 64.8 percent of white children under six, and 62.4 percent of black children who are less than six years old.
References
Institute for Research on Poverty. How many children are poor? http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/irp/faq6.htm
National Center for Children in Poverty. Young Children in Poverty Fact Sheet. July 1999.
http://cpmcnet.columbia.edu/dept/nccp
Prepared by Roderick Harrison for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. August 2003.
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