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Friday, October 31st, 2014

Why child poverty in the US may be much worse than you realize

Author:     Danielle Kurtzleben
Source:     Vox
Publication Date:     October 30, 2014, 2:40 p.m. ET
 Link: Why child poverty in the US may be much worse than you realize
Stephan:   One of America's favorite lies about itself is that we care about children, they are the future. You hear politicians say it, media people tout it, clergy extoll it. It is a damnable lie. Individual parents care about their child or children. But as a society we could hardly care less about the nation's children collectively, and the facts show it, as this report describes.

Child Poverty ratesNearly 44 percent of all US kids were in poverty for two or more months from 2009 to 2012, the Census Bureau reported on Wednesday.

Poverty is unevenly spread, and for many college-educated, urban-dwelling, well-to-do Americans can be almost entirely hidden. It might be that none of the kids in your neighborhood or church or school district were in poverty during this period. But that means that there’s some other neighborhood where many — even most — of the kids were. And this is just the beginning of the staggering figures on US child poverty.

Nearly 3.2 million kids were in poverty throughout the downturn

Of course, those nearly 44 percent of kids weren’t in poverty that whole time. It includes lots of kids who entered and exited poverty over that period. But narrower poverty measures also show staggering numbers. For example, the average monthly poverty rate for US kids was 24.2 percent in 2012. The number of kids in poverty for all of 2012 was 9.5 million — that’s 12.9 percent of all American kids. And 4.4 percent — […]

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