Southern Children and Family Security

Abstract

CHILDERN occupy a much more important place in southern families than in other regions (Table 1). In absolute numbers more than one-third of the nation's children are in southern homes. In later life migration distributes many of these children throughout the country, emphasizing the national stake in their development. Western States average only about 0.9 of a child per family as against nearly 1.5 in Southern States. The Northeast and North Central States average almost exactly 1 child per family. The average children per family is about the same for whites and Negroes within the urban and farm population, but the Negro total is higher because they are more rural. On the other hand, nonfarm family wage or salary incomes in the South ($965) are only about two-thirds of the national average ($1,380). The support of a child population one-third larger than that of other regions by family incomes which are one-third smaller raises many problems of family economics and has its effect both upon the level of living of the parents and of the children. These problems constitute a challenge not only to families but also to the planners and legislators of States and communities and students of social policy who are concerned with the maximum equalization of opportunity. The standard of living is not always maintained by the earnings of a single wage earner who provides the sole support of a family. The inadequacy of the individual earnings of many workers for the full satisfaction of the needs of their family is indicated by the number of supplementary earners in families-wives, sons, daughters, and other relatives who contribute to the common budget. The proportion of families with supplementary earners and the differential incomes of such families is shown in Table 2. The South as a whole has a higher proportion of families with more than one earner than the national proportion, and within the South 42 percent of the Negro families have more than one earner as against 31 percent of the white families. When all wage or salary workers, farm and nonfarm, are classified by relationship to the family head, the distribution is: head of family 57 percent; wives 10 percent; and other relatives of the family head 33 percent. The social consequences of the need for the earnings of members of the family other than the head are of very widesignificance. To mention only the most obvious implications: Child labor with its lack of educational opportunity results. Families with working wives usually have few children, and when wives or widows with young children do work, the home life of the children is often neglected. Adult offspring, who remain to contribute to family support, usually delay their marriages and start their own families later. The analyses presented herewith deal with family income (as of 1939) based upon the Census enumeration of 1940. Only occasionally in recent years has information been available as to the family incomes of a sufficiently large segment of the population to warrant safe generalizations. These occasions were the Consumer Purchase Study of 1935-36, The National Health Survey of 1935, and the Census enumeration of 1940.2 The latter is more comprehensive in coverage and lends itself to more accurate relation of the family income to family composition; that is, the census data can be more accurately reduced to per capita incomes for the various types of families. serious deficiency of the census figures, however, is that they include only wage or salary income and, therefore, exclude farm incomes and the incomes from business enterprises, professional fees, 'In this analysis the States included in the southern region are those included by the Census of 1940 in its regional division of the country. These analyses were computed from the following volumes of the U. S. Census of 1940: Population-Characteristics by Age; Population-Families-Wage or Salary 1939; Population-The Labor Force-Wage or Salary 1939; Population and Housing-FamiliesGeneral Characteristics; Population-Families-Types of Family; Population-Families-Sizes of Family and Age of Head. For a fuller discussion and methods of computation, see T. J. Woofter, A Method of Analysis of Family Composition and Income, Journal of the American Statistical Association, December 1944. 2 It is probable. that another cross section will be provided by the special census of 1945.