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First-grade teacher Allyson Strider reads to her students at Plaza Towers Elementary school on August 16, 2013.(Photo: Sue Ogrocki, AP)
A higher percentage of children live in poverty now than did during the Great Recession,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>according to a new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation released Tuesday.
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.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>In 2013, the U.S. Department of Human and Health Service's<span style="color: Red;">*</span>official poverty line was $23,624<span style="color: Red;">*</span>for a family with two adults and two children.
“The fact that it’s happening is disturbing on lots of levels,” said Laura Speer, the associate director for policy reform and advocacy at the Casey Foundation, a non-profit based in Baltimore. “Those kids often don’t have the access to the things they need to thrive.”<span style="color: Red;">*</span>The foundation says its mission is<span style="color: Red;">*</span>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<span style="color: Red;">*</span>16 factors of children's well-being, including economics, education, health<span style="color: Red;">*</span>and family and community.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>It found that<span style="color: Red;">*</span>one in four children<span style="color: Red;">*</span>—<span style="color: Red;">*</span>a<span style="color: Red;">*</span>total of 18.7 million kids<span style="color: Red;">*</span>—<span style="color: Red;">*</span>lived in low-income households in 2013; low-income families were defined as those who<span style="color: Red;">*</span>use more than 30% of their pre-tax income for housing.
However, the numbers<span style="color: Red;">*</span>are from 2013, and Speer said the outcome may be different now that the unemployment rate has lowered to<span style="color: Red;">*</span>5.3%; it was 7.5% in June 2013.<span style="color: Red;">*</span><span style="color: Red;">*</span>Speer said more employed parents would naturally lead to fewer impoverished kids, but she<span style="color: Red;">*</span>doubted it<span style="color: Red;">*</span>would change the number of children in low-income neighborhoods.
“It’s a much bigger issue that’s happening relating to residential segregation, the cost of housing and other factors,” Speer said.
The report<span style="color: Red;">*</span>also examined racial disparities between children living in low-income households. Black, Hispanic<span style="color: Red;">*</span>and American Indian children were more than twice as likely to live in poverty than white children, the report said.
Deirdre Bloome, an assistant professor of sociology<span style="color: Red;">*</span>and faculty associate at<span style="color: Red;">*</span>the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan, said racial segregation by income and housing <span style="color: Red;">*</span>occurs because of economic differences for individual families.
She said people often live as adults in the same neighborhood where they grew up, making it difficult to achieve upward mobility and desegregated areas.
“Where you grew up is similar to where you end up when you’re an adult,” Bloome said. “That helps perpetuate racial segregation.”
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In the state-by-state analysis in the report, Minnesota took the top spot for overall child well-being —<span style="color: Red;">*</span>the first non-New England state to do so in over a decade. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Iowa and Vermont, came in second through fifth.
Several statewide policies and initiatives in Minnesota help increase the likelihood of children's<span style="color: Red;">*</span>well-being in Minnesota. MinnesotaCare, established before the Affordable Care Act, provides publicly subsidized health care to low-income individuals in the state. The state also has an initiative to increase economic security for families, addressing minimum wage, tax credit for low-income families and<span style="color: Red;">*</span>childcare assistance programs.
However, the programs tend to mostly benefit white children, according to Stephanie Hogenson, the research and policy director at<span style="color: Red;">*</span>the Children’s Defense Fund in Minnesota.
“Right now, they aren’t improving outcomes for children of color,” Hogenson said. “We’re trying to turn the dial on that.”
Hogenson said several programs in place can expand to provide more support for black, Latino and American Indian<span style="color: Red;">*</span>children in the state. Those include an early education "head start" program and a parent engagement effort to decrease unemployment for people of color in the state.
“We focus on what’s best for children and we’ve done a good job, we haven’t done the best job in ensuring those programs are accessible and easily utilized by children of color and their family,” she said.
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