Poverty Does Matter

Increased Child Poverty Rate Disproportionately Impacts The Nation's Youngest Learners
     "The Annie E. Casey Foundation is out with its 25th KIDS COUNT Data Book, which has been providing the public with an annual glimpse into the well being of American children for the past quarter-century.
    As big anniversaries do, this one provides a natural opening to look at how we have fared. Trends were both positive and troubling during a time of major demographic shifts: The nation’s population of children climbed from 64 million to 74 million. The percentage of white children declined, Latinos doubled and mothers of young kids entered the labor market in record numbers.
     On the bright side, more children are attending preschool than in 1990. The teen pregnancy rate is at a record low. Juvenile crime is down, and so is juvenile incarceration, though the United States still has a juvenile incarceration rate disproportionately much higher than other developed countries.

     But despite the advances, there has been a recent uptick in the single most important factor for predicting a child’s school readiness and life outcomes generally: whether or not he or she lives in poverty. After recessions end, the child poverty rate tends to continue climbing, and current circumstances appear no different. Even with different ways to measure it and different conclusions, KIDS COUNT shows a reversal of some of the gains made earlier in the past quarter-century, with approximately 16.4 million kids officially living in poverty in 2012. The number of children in single-parent homes was up, too: 35 percent, versus 25 percent in 1990...."

 

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