Child Poverty Rates Research Articles

The impacts of welfare reform on federal assistance to persistently poor children

During the late twentieth century, the US social safety net was transformed to incentivize work by providing generous wage subsidies for low-income workers and reducing federal assistance to able-bodied unemployed adults. Following the transformation and during the economic boom of the 1990s, welfare rolls and annual poverty rates plummeted, especially for children. Despite the economic boom, there were still many persistently poor children living with parents who did not work, and little is known about how the reforms impacted these children's finances. In this paper we compare rates of persistent child poverty before and after the welfare reforms and examine how federal assistance received by persistently poor children changed as a result of the reforms. We find that federal assistance to persistently poor children declined following the reforms, but with divergent results depending on parental employment. While persistently poor children with employed parents benefited from increased income via the Ear...

Education America—“Welcome to My Nightmare”

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes An early version of this article appears as “Postscript: Education America—’Welcome to My Nightmare’” in Peters (2012 Peters , M. A. ( 2012 ). Obama, Education and the End of the American Dream . Rotterdam : Sense Publishers . [Google Scholar]). Youth unemployment rates in 2011 (approximately): Spain, 47%; Eurozone, 21%; United States, 17%; and Germany, 9%. The United States defines the poverty line as income of $22,314 a year for a family of four and $11,139 for an individual (U.S. Census Bureau 2011 Line , M. ( 2011 ). Providence Plans to Pink Slip All Teachers . http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2011/02/24/providence-plans-to-pink-slip-all-teachers/#ixzz1evnTU63G [Google Scholar]). The poverty rate for children under age 18 increased to 22% in 2010; the poverty rate for adults ages 18 to 64 rose to 13.7%; for people 65 and older, the poverty rate was barely changed at 9%. Non-Hispanic whites had the lowest poverty rate, 9.9% (Asians, 12.1%; Hispanic 26.6%), and blacks had the highest rate at 27.4%. About 14% of men were below the poverty line, compared to 16.2% of women. Families headed by a married couple had only a 6.2% poverty rate, whereas families with a single mother had a 31.6% rate, and families with a single father had a 15.8% rate. (Censky 2011 Censky , A. ( 2011 ). Poverty Rates Rise in America . http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/13/news/economy/poverty_rate_income/index.htm [Google Scholar]; U.S. Census Bureau 2011 Line , M. ( 2011 ). Providence Plans to Pink Slip All Teachers . http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2011/02/24/providence-plans-to-pink-slip-all-teachers/#ixzz1evnTU63G [Google Scholar]). On October 15, tens of thousands of demonstrators staged rallies in 900 cities around the world, including Auckland, Sydney, Hong Kong, Taipei, Tokyo, São Paulo, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Hamburg, and Leipzig (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street). Early Childhood: The Zero to Five Plan funds and helps states move toward voluntary, universal preschool education; expands Early Head Start and Head Start; provides affordable, and high-quality child care. K12: To reform No Child Left Behind; support high-quality schools and close low-performing charter schools; make math and science education a national priority; expand high-quality afterschool opportunities (21st century learning programs); support college outreach programs (e.g., GEAR UP, TRIO, and Upward Bound); support college credit initiatives; support English Language Learners; recruit, prepare, retain, and reward teachers. Higher education: To create the American Opportunity Tax Credit—universal and fully refundable credit will ensure that the first $4,000 of a college education is completely free for most Americans and will cover two-thirds the cost of tuition at the average public college or university and make community college tuition completely free for most students. Recipients of the credit will be required to conduct 100 hours of community service; simplify the application process for financial aid. (See http://change.gov/agenda/education_agenda/.)

Debt-Poor Kids

Child poverty in the United States has averaged around 20% since the late 1970s. During this time period, it has been consistently and considerably higher than poverty rates for other age groups. The case is often made that poverty in the United States is greatly underestimated. The many problems involved in measuring aggregate poverty rate also plague measures of child poverty. This article focuses on how interest payments on prior consumer debt affect government calculations of child poverty. After summarizing the negative consequences of child poverty, we use the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances to estimate child poverty rates by subtracting interest payments on consumer debt from household income. The article concludes with some policy proposals for reducing child poverty and the number of households (especially those with children) who are “debt poor.”

Trends in Child Poverty in Hong Kong Immigrant Families

In Hong Kong, child poverty is a serious social problem which may lead to intergenerational poverty, but nevertheless only a few studies have examined this issue, particularly for immigrant families. Using Census data (5 %) from 1981, 1991, 2001, and 2011, we assessed child poverty rates in the past three decades and identified key variables contributing to changes in the risk of child poverty for both immigrant and local families. Our results indicate that child poverty rates in Hong Kong-born families have fluctuated between 14.3 and 15.8 % over the past three decades, while for immigrant families they have increased steadily and substantially from 18.1 % in 1981 to 36.5 % in 2001 and then to 37.5 % in 2011. We show that the increase in immigrant child poverty is associated with changes in the Hong Kong economy that have made it more difficult for such families to adapt to the host society, especially in the 1990s and that this negative effect offset the positive influence of compositional changes among this group of immigrant families in terms of parental education levels and family size. The gap between immigrant and local families in terms of child poverty risk is mainly due to the fact that during the 1990s the negative effect of contextual changes in Hong Kong was cancelled out by the beneficial impact of compositional changes for local families, but not for immigrant families where the latter effect was minimal.

Global extreme poverty rates for children, adults and the elderly

Chen and Ravallion’s estimates of global extreme poverty rates are well known. This note, by considering how these rates vary by age group, reaches two important and policy relevant conclusions and emphasizes a central avenue for future research. The first is that child extreme poverty rates are 50% higher than adult ones and almost twice those of the elderly. This result depends on assuming that all individuals in a household have the same resource needs and no economies of scale exist, as in the World Bank standard approach. Conversely, if conservative estimates of economies of scale and individual discount factors are adopted, global extreme poverty rates and the child–adult gap are much smaller than the Chen and Ravallion estimates. These findings highlight the policy importance of research efforts towards understanding how needs vary within a household and with its size.

The importance of poverty early in childhood

Using a poverty line set at 60% of New Zealand’s median national income, nearly one in five New Zealand children (19%) was poor in 2011 (Figure 1, based on Perry, 2012). This poverty rate is considerably less than that of the United States and Canada, similar to that of Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany and France, and much greater that in Scandinavian countries. These rates are far from immutable; New Zealand’s child poverty rate was much higher in 2004 before social policies were enacted which focused, in part, on the country’s child poverty problem.

The challenge of securing durable reductions in child poverty in New Zealand

New Zealand has tolerated significant levels of relative child poverty for more than two decades. For a country which once prided itself on being comparatively egalitarian and, more particularly, on being a great place to bring up children, this is surprising. It is also concerning. Child poverty imposes many long-term costs. This is especially the case, according to the available evidence, when poverty occurs during early childhood1 and when it is severe and/or persistent. These costs afflict not only the children directly exposed to poverty (e.g. in the form of lower educational achievement, reduced lifetime earnings and poorer health outcomes), but also society as a whole. The wider social and economic costs include increased health care costs, lower productivity growth and higher rates of criminal offending.2 In short, the empirical evidence suggests that substantial rates of child poverty reduce a nation’s prosperity. Hence, on economic grounds alone there is a case for seeking lower child poverty rates. Other considerations, such as the pursuit of fair opportunities for all children, make such a goal even more compelling.

Validation of the Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale with preschool children in low-income families in Hong Kong

Play is a primary context for fostering young children's positive peer interactions. Through play, children develop the social, emotional, cognitive and language skills that contribute to the ability to establish effective relationships with peers. The Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale (PIPPS) was first developed by Fantuzzo to assess the quality of peer interactions among low-income preschoolers in the USA. The present study invited 1622 children aged three to six and 152 teachers in 10 kindergartens in districts with high child poverty rates in Hong Kong to participate in the study (a) to validate the psychometric properties of a culturally, developmentally and linguistically appropriate version of the PIPPS using confirmatory factor analysis, (b) to investigate gender and (c) age differences in peer play, and (d) to inform early childhood intervention for children in low-income families. Translation and back-translation – a commonly used procedure in the translation of cross-cultural research instruments – was adopted. Results indicated that the three-factor model of the PIPPS (play interaction, play disruption and play disconnection) statistically fit the results in the Hong Kong sample. Girls exhibited greater play interaction and less play disruption and play disconnection. Peer interactive play behaviour increased with age. The cultural and linguistic contexts of scale development should receive attention in future research. Recommendations are made regarding lexical access in non-alphabetical language systems like Chinese; cultural understandings of shyness, withdrawal and social disinterest as they relate to the interpretation of play behaviour; and establishing the concurrent validity of the Hong Kong version of the PIPPS.

A Study of County Child Poverty Rates in Puerto Rico: Does Space Matter?

AbstractPrevious literature on childhood poverty in Puerto Rico is sparse. This is surprising since Puerto Rico exhibits very high poverty rates as compared to the rest of the United States. In this paper, we apply a structural perspective and consider how economic characteristics, household structure and migration patterns influence child poverty rates in Puerto Rico. Data for this paper come from the 2006–2010 Puerto Rico Community Survey (PRCS) summary files. We apply methods of exploratory spatial data analysis and spatial regression models to understand how municipio (county equivalents) level child poverty rates are influenced by these factors. A spatial modeling methodology was deemed appropriate since significant spatial structure is found for the child poverty rate and residuals from the Ordinary Least Squares model. Household composition, as measured by the percent of female headed households and the percent of grandparents caring for their own grandchildren consistently showed positive associations with child poverty. In terms of the economic sector variables, the proportion of the workforce in agriculture and proportion without a high school education showed significant positive effects on child poverty. With respect to migration, we find little to no impact, but we do find that child poverty is concentrated outside of the region adjacent to the capital of San Juan.

Child poverty map reveals huge disparities in the UK

One in five children in the UK lives in poverty and is ‘missing out on the essentials of a decent childhood’. That is one of the findings from a new report published by the End Child Poverty campaign, a coalition of 100 charities committed to ending child poverty in the UK. It revealed that in one local authority (Tower Hamlets in London) and eight Parliamentary constituencies at least 40% of children are living below the poverty line. This means that they live in households earning less than 60% of median income. The study, entitled the Child Poverty Map of the UK, revealed a wide disparity within regions. In London, for example, the constituency of Poplar and Limehouse has a child poverty rate of 41%, while in Richmond it is 7%. In the North West, 38% of children in Manchester are poor, while in the Ribble Valley the figure is 7%. The report said that poverty ‘damages children’s experiences of childhood and harms their future life chances’ and cited research by Save the Children that 61% of parents in poverty had cut back on food and more than a quarter had skipped meals. Enver Solomon, chair of the End Child Poverty campaign, said that the Child Poverty Map showed ‘the gross levels of inequality’ faced by some children. He added: ‘Far too may children whose parents are struggling to make a living are having to go hungry and miss out on the essentials of a decent childhood that all young people should be entitled to.’ The campaign has written to local authorities with the highest levels of child poverty, asking how they plan to tackle the issue. ‘The government must also closely examine its current strategy for reducing poverty and consider what more it could do to ensure millions of children’s lives are not blighted by the corrosive impact that poverty has on their daily existence,’ said Mr Solomon. Meanwhile Ellen Broome, director of policy at The Children’s Society, said the study showed ‘the truly shocking scale of child poverty’ in the UK. ‘Worryingly, the situation is set to get much worse,’ she warned. ‘Families up and down the country are already struggling to make ends meet and the government’s decision to cap benefit increases for the next three years at below inflation will drive an additional 200,000 children into poverty.’ The End Child Poverty campaign used 2012 data collated by researchers from Loughborough University’s Centre for Research in Social Policy. The Child Poverty Map of the UK can be downloaded at www.endchildpoverty. org.uk/images/ecp/130212%20ECP%20 local%20report%20final(1).pdf

Housing, income inequality and child injury mortality in Europe: a cross‐sectional study

Child poverty rates are compared throughout Europe to monitor how countries are caring for their children. Child poverty reduction measures need to consider the importance of safe living environments for all children. In this study we investigate how European country-level economic disparity and housing conditions relate to one another, and whether they differentially correlate with child injury mortality. We used an ecological, cross-sectional study design of 26 European countries of which 20 high-income and 6 upper-middle-income. Compositional characteristics of the home and its surroundings were extracted from the 2006 European Union Income Social Inclusion and Living Conditions Database (n = 203,000). Mortality data of children aged 1-14 years were derived from the World Health Organization Mortality Database. The main outcome measure was age standardized cause-specific injury mortality rates analysed by income inequality and housing and neighbourhood conditions. Nine measures of housing and neighbourhood conditions highly differentiating European households at country level were clustered into three dimensions, labelled respectively housing, neighbourhood and economic household strain. Income inequality significantly and positively correlated with housing strain (r = 0.62, P = 0.001) and household economic strain (r = 0.42, P = 0.009) but not significantly with neighbourhood strain (r = 0.34, P = 0.087). Child injury mortality rates correlated strongly with both country-level income inequality and housing strain, with very small age-specific differences. In the European context housing, neighbourhood and household economic strains worsened with increasing levels of income inequality. Child injury mortality rates are strongly and positively associated with both income inequality and housing strain, suggesting that housing material conditions could play a role in the association between income inequality and child health.

Explaining heterogeneity in the child poverty rate among immigrant families: Differences by parental citizenship

Abstract Much of the debate about child poverty among immigrant families has centered on factors that place immigrant children at a high risk for poverty. What is missing in this debate and the literature is that children in immigrant families are economically heterogeneous and that children in naturalized families are doing as well as or better than children in native families in terms of economic status. To examine the heterogeneous economic status of children in immigrant families, this study compared children's poverty rates by parental nativity and citizenship status, decomposing demographic risk factors of child poverty. The results indicate that whereas lower parental education and employment status largely explain the relatively higher poverty rate among children in noncitizen families, higher parental education and employment rates and a lower rate of single parenthood explain why children in naturalized families have a lower rate of poverty than those in noncitizen families. Implications of these findings are discussed in detail.

The Effect of Specific Welfare Policies on Poverty

This paper uses monthly SIPP data from 1988 through 2002 and monthly state-level policy data to measure the effects of specific policies on the deep poverty and poverty rates of ever-single mothers and children of ever-single mothers. The 19 specific policies included in the model are grounded in a conceptual framework. More lenient eligibility requirements for welfare receipt and more generous financial incentives to work generally reduce deep poverty, as hypothesized. Welfare time limits are hypothesized to have ambiguous effects on poverty and our results suggest that some stricter time limit policies may decrease deep poverty and poverty rates.

Lessons From <i>Patchwork Nation</i>: A New Framework for Building Community Indicators

Keywords: Community indicators, principal components analysis, data democratization, community health needs assessment, data visualizationIntroductionMeasuring impact has become increasingly important in philanthropy as foundations seek to learn more about the impact of their investments by measuring the achievements of the programs and projects they support. In an era where demand seems only to increase and resources will always be limited, identifying needs and priorities must be the foundation of any philanthropic endeavor. As the nonprofit sector has grown in size and scale over the past 30 years, so has the pressure on nonprofits that deliver health and human services to operate efficiently. To reduce administrative costs and put more dollars into services, community indicators are increasingly becoming part of assessing need.This article attempts to provide an approach that enhances the usefulness of community-indicator projects. We build upon the work of previous community-indicator scholars while employing a methodological approach - principal components analysis (PCA) - used in the work Our Patchwork Nation: The Surprising Truth About the Real America (Chinni & Gimple, 2010) The result is a more informative approach to assessing community needs that is easily understandable, visually appealing, and more applicable to a broad audience. We believe the lessons learned from our approach to community-indicator projects can help other grantmakers increase the effectiveness of data-intensive, large-scale community-indicator work.First, we provide an overview of the rationale that drove our approach. This is followed by a brief overview of the literature related to recent critiques of community-indicator work; the critique of the current practice in community indicators is highlighted in the context of nascent data-democratization efforts. We then apply PCA to the multitude of community indicators developed as part of a community health needs assessment for Kent County, Michigan.False DichotomyPundits often point to the near ubiquitous Republican and Democratic map of America's counties as way of highlighting our nation's political leanings. Closer inspection, however, is warranted. Chinni and Gimple (2010) expose the problems associated with this false dichotomy.Raised in the Detroit suburb of Warren, Chinni writes of being particularly vexed by the blue labeling of Michigan's Wayne and Washtenaw counties - counties with striking differences. Wayne County is home to Detroit. In 2010 Wayne's median income was $40,590 and per capita income was $21,405; the overall poverty rate was 22.5 percent and the child poverty rate was 32.6 percent (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007 - 2010e). The proportion of the population with a bachelor's degree was just 20.4 percent (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007 - 2010f ). Washtenaw County, home to Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan, is about 40 miles west of Detroit. The median income in Washtenaw was $56,708 in 2010, per capita income was $30,594, and the overall poverty and child poverty rates were just 13.7 percent (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007 - 2010c). The proportion of Washtenaw's population with a bachelor's degree or greater was 50.6 percent, more than twice that of Wayne (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007 - 2010d).How could Wayne County and Detroit, synonymous with urban decay, and Washtenaw County and Ann Arbor, often listed among the top places in to live in the U.S., be thought of as similar because they are blue? This question prompted a move beyond the broad generalization of red and blue designations toward a new paradigm - a more nuanced approach that more accurately characterizes the diversity of the United States by classifying each of America's 3,141 counties into one of 12 community types.1Community Indicators: A Brief HistoryCommunity indicators are a system of measures designed, developed, and analyzed by community members to provide neighborhood-level information for community-building and policymaking (National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, 2012; Smolko, Strange, & Venetoulis, 2006). …

The Challenges of Combining Two Databases in Small-Area Estimation: An Example Using Spatial Microsimulation of Child Poverty

Spatial microsimulation techniques have become an increasingly popular way of fulfilling the need for generating small-area data estimates. However, the technique also poses numerous methodological challenges, including the utilisation of two different databases simultaneously to produce estimates of population characteristics at the local level. An important but neglected question is whether different distributions of key variables within these two databases may affect the validity of the spatial estimation results. This study uses the significant policy issue of small-area estimates of child poverty rates in Australia to examine this question. The different income distributions for families with children in the two databases and the consequent effect on child-poverty estimates are assessed, while the apparent validity of these synthetic small-area poverty rates is gauged.

Lone parents, poverty and policy in the European Union

Although there is considerable research evidence to show that children in lone parent families are at increased risk of poverty, there have been few comparative analyses of lone parents in Europe. Using the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) 2009, this paper compares the prevalence and characteristics of lone parent families, analyses the poverty and deprivation risks of children, and evaluates the potential impact of social transfer income packages on child poverty reduction. We use the unique personal identifiers of mothers, fathers and partners to define lone parent families with greater precision. Using a multi-level framework, we find lower child poverty rates in countries with more generous social transfers, even after controlling for the country standard of living. A reverse pattern is observed for material deprivation: the negative effect of social transfer income washes out when the GDP per capita is controlled for, which itself has a negative and significant effect on material deprivation.

Children, Families and Poverty: Definitions, Trends, Emerging Science and Implications for Policy.

Now, more than ever, it is crucial to address the topic of children and poverty in the U.S., given current scientific knowledge about poverty's influence on children and effective strategies to mitigate its negative impact. In this report, we summarize the best available information on definitions and trends in child poverty, policy responses to child poverty and the impact of poverty on children's health and development. Research suggests that various factors exert upward and downward pressure on child poverty rates. Upward pressure is exerted by declining work rates for men, stagnant wages for low-wage workers, increasing rates of children raised in female-headed households, and growing gaps in educational attainment. Downward pressure is exerted by the U.S. system of antipoverty policies and programs, which appears to be cutting "pre-transfer" poverty rates by more than 50%. Nonetheless, child poverty rates in the United States are high by both historical and international comparison. We then review the emerging science on biological and ecological processes by which poverty affects child development and key findings regarding the efficacy of comprehensive strategies to reduce poverty and to promote the human capital development of poor children. In the final section, we reflect on implications for moving forward in science and policy.

Child poverty and family policies across eighteen wealthy Western democracies

While a good deal has been written about the potential value of family policies in reducing child poverty in Western countries, few cross-national quantitative studies have been carried out on this topic. This article uses ordinary least squares regression analysis on panel data from 18 Western democracies from 1987 to 2007 to test the significance of family policies and other welfare policies on child poverty rates. It extends existing research on the relationship between family policies and child poverty by utilizing a broader data-set in terms of time, countries, and child poverty measures. The main finding is that all three of the main family policies studied – child cash and tax benefits, paid parenting leaves, and public support for childcare – correlate significantly with lower child poverty rates. Somewhat surprisingly, disability and sickness insurance also correlates significantly with lower child poverty in nearly every model and test. These findings provide valuable insight for future research...

Familial Effect on Child Poverty in Hong Kong Immigrant Families

This study investigated how family context affect poverty disparities between young children of immigrants from the Mainland China and children of local families whose parents were born in Hong Kong using 2006 bicensus data. 12,609 and 12,753 children of immigrant and local families were included in our data analyses. We find higher child poverty rates in immigrant families than in local families. Moreover, we found that family structure (single-parent vs. 2-parent), assimilation (first vs. second generation children of immigrant families), and parental human capital characteristics are significantly associated with the child poverty risk. Surprisingly, the impact of immigrant status on child poverty rates is stronger in 2-parent households than in single-parent households while child poverty declines associated with increasing assimilation defined by generational status of children are greater in 2-parent immigrant families than the corresponding declines in single-parent immigrant families. The implications of our results in intergenerational poverty are discussed.

Educational Opportunity is Achievable and Affordable

Raising academic standards while eliminating achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students are America's primary national educational goals. This pursuit of equity and excellence reflects a bipartisan consensus of presidents, governors, legislators, corporate leaders, educators, and the public forged over two decades. Linking equity with higher achievement would fulfill the promise of equal educational opportunity that the U.S. Supreme Court articulated in Brown v. Board of Education more than a half century ago. It also reflects a broad awareness that unless the nation can provide a high-quality education to all children, America will lose its ability to compete effectively in the global marketplace and will jeopardize the continued vitality of its democratic institutions. But the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and related standards-based reform initiatives in virtually all of the states have made limited progress toward these goals. While vital school improvement efforts must continue, the nation's ambitious educational goals can't be met unless we understand and confront the core problem underlying the achievement gap: the extensive pattern of childhood poverty that inhibits educational opportunity and educational achievement. Results of the latest PISA international student assessment indicate that U.S. schools with fewer than 25% of their students living in poverty rank above the world's highest scorers among advanced industrial countries. But when you add scores of students from schools with high-poverty rates, the United States sinks to the middle of the pack. At nearly 22% and rising, the child-poverty rate in the United States is the highest among wealthy nations. (Poverty rates in Denmark and in Finland, which is justifiably celebrated as a top global performer on the PISA tests, are below 5%). In reality, America doesn't have a general education crisis; we have a poverty crisis. The effect of poverty on children's learning is profound and multidimensional. Children who grow up in poverty are much more likely to experience conditions that make learning difficult and put them at risk for academic failure. Moreover, the longer a child is poor, the more extreme the poverty, the greater the concentration of poverty, and the younger the child, the more serious the effects will be on the child's potential to succeed academically. According to a growing body of research, America will attain its goals of equity in preparing students to function effectively as citizens and productive workers only through a concerted effort to eliminate socioeconomic barriers. Our research has identified four prime areas of support services for children and youth that are most beneficial to helping children overcome the poverty-imposed impediments to educational achievement. These core areas are: * Early childhood education beginning from birth that ensures the range of development necessary to be ready for school; * Routine and preventive physical and mental health care that maintain bodies and minds that are able to learn effectively; * After-school, summer, and other expanded learning time opportunities that bolster academic learning and pro-mote social, emotional, and civic development necessary to succeed in school; and * Family engagement and support that foster students' academic development. In each area, studies commissioned by the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University have analyzed current research and demonstrated a direct relation-ship between each factor and student achievement. For example, children who attend preschool perform better in kindergarten than peers who didn't attend preschool, and these effects are larger for lower-income students (Kagan, 2009). Poor urban youth have higher rates of asthma, which results in sleep deprivation and absenteeism that adversely affect their motivation and ability to learn in school (Basch, 2010). …