World Socialist Web Site
23 June 1999
News & Analysis : North America
5.2 million young children in US growing up in poverty
By Paul Scherrer
5.2 million young children in the US, nearly one out of every four children under six years old, are growing up in families whose income falls below the federal poverty line, according to a report issued by the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) last week. The report found that poverty among young children has declined from the all-time high of 6.4 million children in 1993, but still remains 50 percent higher than the average two decades ago. Overall the young child poverty rate (YCPR) is 22 percent.
... In addition to looking at the overall poverty rates for children, the report also looks at the children living in ?extreme poverty,? ?quite poor? and those living in ?near poverty.? Two and a half million children are living in families whose income is less than half the poverty level. In other words, one out of every ten young children are growing up in families where income is less than $6,400 a year or $123 a week. Such families would either live in government subsidized housing, share a home with another family or be homeless.
Another 2.7 million children live in quite poor families, which earn 50 to 100 percent of the poverty level. Another 4.7 million live in families earning 100 to 185 percent of the poverty level. In all, nearly 10 million young children, or 43 percent of all children, live near or below the poverty level.
Overall more white children grow up in poverty, although the poverty rates for black and Hispanic children remain about three times as high, at nearly 40 percent. The fastest growth in the YCPR is taking place in the suburbs. The suburbs now account for over 37 percent of young children in poverty. YCPR is nearly 40 percent in urban centers and 23 percent in rural communities.
The working poor
The report documents the growth of the so-called working poor. While the overall number of young children in poverty has gone down since 1993, the percentage of children in families with at least one parent working full- or part-time has shot up to 65 percent, a 20 percent increase from the 1993 level.
The rapid growth in the number of the working poor reflects the decline in wages for the poorest section of the population, the growth of part-time and temporary employment and the sharp reduction in the welfare rolls since 1993. Most of those who lost their benefits under President Bill Clinton's ?welfare reform? program have ended up in the lowest paying jobs.
?Working, playing by the rules is no longer a guarantee that a family will not be in poverty,? says Neil Bennett. ?As more and more people leave welfare to work, what we are seeing is that working does not mean that they are leaving living in poverty. There are a large percentage of people who are working full-time who are not succeeding in keeping their families out of poverty.?
Bennett continued, ?At the same time the official poverty rate does not take into account the expense of going back to work, such as the cost of child care, transportation, state, local and federal taxes, as well as out-of-pocket expenses like work clothes. The real income of many people returning to work is even lower. In addition there is the psychological impact on parents who, doing what they are told they are supposed to, still do not have the means to support their family.?
Just as a job is no longer a guarantee against poverty, neither is a high school degree. Nearly 30 percent of families in which the better-educated parent has a high school degree were living in poverty, an increase of 77 percent from the 1975-79 period. For families whose better-educated parent had some college, the YCPR had gone up to 15.2 percent, a 78 percent increase from the earlier period.
Welfare reform
The impact of welfare reform upon children living in poverty has been dramatic. Since 1993, the proportion of families receiving public assistance has fallen from 53 percent to 36 percent in 1997. Two-thirds of all people receiving public assistance are children. Single parents with children, mostly mothers, make up the majority of families on public assistance. This group has made up the majority of those being forced from welfare, yet they face some of the greatest obstacles in finding work, such as finding child care and medical care. Nearly 60 percent of young children in ?mother-only? households grow up in poverty, and if the mother lacks a high school degree, the rate climes to over 80 percent.
Politicians have hailed welfare reform as a great success because the nation's welfare rolls have fallen 42 percent since 1993, and some states' welfare roles have been slashed by over 80 percent.
.... The NCCP study can be obtained from their web site at:
http://cpmcnet.columbia.edu/dept/nccp/
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