Child Poverty In America: The Worsening Toll It Exacts

Abstract

hildren are almost twice as likely as other groups of Americans to be poor. Nearly 13 million American children-one in five children (and one in four preschoolers) are poor. Over 3 million of these live in rural America. Those numbers apply to 1989 (the last full growth year in the ecohalf in a single decade, falling from 27 percent in 1960 to 14 percent in 1969. Poor children were aided by a combination of robust economic growth and concerted public action. But then progress halted during the 1970s, and child poverty rates moved upwards again in the 1980s. Moreover, the impact of recessions on nomic cycle). There is reason to believe that for 1991 (a recession year) they are even worse because child poverty trends follow the ups and downs of the economy. These record breaking levels of child poverty continue even though America has never been more capable of eliminating child poverty. Indeed, the nation can no longer afford to have such widespread child poverty-economic ally, socially, or morally. Despite the picture many would sketch of a nation crippled by budget deficits and lacking the resources to tackle its fundamental problems, America's income-as )> Child poverty in America has reached crisis proportions. And the situation is getting worse. Nearly 13 million children live in poverty. In rural America the poverty rate of children is 22 percent-one out of every five. Both this nation's success in reducing poverty among the elderly and the much lower child poverty rates of our international free market competitors demonstrate that child poverty can be reduced substantially, if there is a will to do so. children appears to be growing increasingly serious. In earlier eras children fell into poverty during recessions, but larger numbers escaped poverty during recoveries. The recessions of the 1970s were much deeper than the single recession of the 1960s, pushing children into poverty at a rate of more than half a million per recession year. The impact of recessions on children grew even worse in the 1980s, adding an average of 884,000 children annually to the ranks of the poor. In turn, economic recoveries have lost virtually all of their ability to rescue children from poverty. During the 1960s growth periods lifted measured by the Gross National Product (GNP)-reached an all-time high in 1990. Between 1979 and 1989, GNP increased more than one fifth even as the number of poor children grew by 21 percent. The nation's success in lifting older Americans out of poverty shows that the nation has the knowledge and ability to dramatical-