{"id":133172,"date":"2014-07-24T20:48:01","date_gmt":"2014-07-24T20:48:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=133172"},"modified":"2014-07-24T20:48:01","modified_gmt":"2014-07-24T20:48:01","slug":"nearly-one-quarter-us-children-poverty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/nearly-one-quarter-us-children-poverty\/","title":{"rendered":"Nearly one quarter of US children in poverty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andre Damon<\/em><\/p>\n

Nearly one in four children in the United States lives in a family below the federal poverty line, according to figures presented in a new report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.<\/p>\n

A total of 16.3 million children live in poverty, and 45 percent of children in the US live in households whose incomes fall below 200 percent of the federal poverty line.<\/p>\n

The annual report, titled the\u00a0Kids Count Data Book<\/em><\/a>, compiles data on children\u2019s economic well-being, education, health, and family support. It concludes that, \u201cinequities among children remain deep and stubbornly persistent.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report is an indictment of the state of American society nearly six years after the onset of the financial crisis in 2008. While the Obama administration and the media have proclaimed an economic \u201crecovery,\u201d conditions of life for the vast majority of the population continue to deteriorate.<\/p>\n

The report notes that the percentage of children in poverty hit 23 percent in 2012, up sharply from 16 percent in 2000. Some states are much worse. For almost the entire American South, the share of children in poverty is higher than 25 percent.<\/p>\n

These conditions are the product of a ruthless class policy pursued at all levels of government. While trillions of dollars have been made available to Wall Street, sending both the stock markets and corporate profits to record highs, economic growth has stagnated, social programs have been slashed, and public services decimated, while prices of many basic items are on the rise. Jobs that have been \u201ccreated\u201d are overwhelmingly part-time or low-wage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve yet to see the recovery from the economic recession,\u201d said Laura Speer, associate director for policy reform and advocacy at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, who helped produce the report. \u201cThe child poverty rate is connected to parents\u2019 employment and how much they are getting paid,\u201d added Ms. Speer in a telephone interview Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe jobs that are being created in this economy, including temporary and low-wage jobs, are not good enough to keep children out of poverty,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Kids Count<\/em>\u00a0report notes, \u201cDeclining economic opportunity for parents without a college degree in the context of growing inequality has meant that children\u2019s life chances are increasingly constrained by the socioeconomic status of their parents.\u201d The percentage of children who live in high-poverty communities has likewise increased significantly, with 13 percent of children growing up in communities where more than 30 percent of residents are poor, up from 9 percent in 2000.<\/p>\n

Speer added that, given the significant run-up in home prices over the previous two decades, \u201cthe housing cost burden has gotten worse.\u201d She noted that the share of children who live in households that spend more than one third of their annual income on housing has hit 38 percent, up from 28 percent in 1990. In states such as California, these figures are significantly higher.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn many cases families are living doubled up and sleeping on couches to afford very expensive places like New York City,\u201d she added. \u201cPaying such a large share of your income for rent means that parents have to decide between whether or not to pay the rent or to pay the utility bills. It\u2019s not a matter of making choices over things that are luxuries, it\u2019s choosing between necessities.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report concludes, \u201cAs both poverty and wealth have become more concentrated residentially, evidence suggests that school districts and individual schools are becoming increasingly segregated by socioeconomic status.\u201d<\/p>\n

In most of the United States, K-12 education is funded through property taxes, and there are significant differences in education funding based on local income levels. \u201cKids who grow up in low-income neighborhoods have much less access to education: that\u2019s only been exacerbated over the last 25 years,\u201d Speer said.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Kids Count<\/em>\u00a0survey follows the publication in April of Feeding America\u2019s annual report, which showed that one in five children live in households that do not regularly get enough to eat. The percentage of households that are \u201cfood insecure\u201d rose from 11.1 percent in 2007 to 16.0 percent in 2012. Sixteen million children, or 21.6 percent, do not get enough to eat. The rate of food insecurity in the United States is nearly twice that of the European Union.<\/p>\n

According to the US government\u2019s supplemental poverty measure, 16.1 percent of the US population\u2013nearly 50 million people\u2013is in poverty, up from 12.2 percent of the population in 2000.<\/p>\n

The Kids Count report notes that the ability of single mothers to get a job is particularly sensitive to the state of the economy, and that the employment rate of single mothers with children under 6 years old has fallen from 69 percent in 2000 to 60 percent ten years later. This has taken place even as anti-poverty measures such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) have been made conditional on parents finding work.<\/p>\n

The report noted that enrollment in the federal Head Start program, which serves 3- and 4-year-olds dropped off when the \u201crecession decimated state budgets and halted progress.\u201d It added that cutbacks to federal and state anti-poverty programs, as well as health programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, are contributing to the growth of poverty and inequality.<\/p>\n

With the \u201csequester\u201d budget cuts signed by the Obama administration in early 2013, most federal anti-poverty programs are being slashed by five percent each year for a decade. \u201cPrograms like head start, LIHEAP [Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program], and other federal programs are really a lifeline in a lot of families,\u201d Speer said.<\/p>\n

Since the implementation of the sequester cuts, Congress and the Obama administration have slashed food stamp spending on two separate occasions and put an end to federal extended jobless benefits for more than three million long-term unemployed people and their families. These measures can be expected to throw hundreds of thousands more children into poverty.<\/p>\n

This piece<\/a> was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andre Damon Nearly one in four children in the United States lives in a family below the federal poverty line, according to figures presented in a new report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. A total of 16.3 million children live in poverty, and 45 percent of children in the US live in households whose […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":133173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,1616],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-133172","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}