The Dynamics of Childhood Poverty

Abstract

Child poverty rates have remained high since the middle of the 1970s. While several trends, including declines in the number of children per family and increases in parental years of schooling, worked to reduce child poverty rates, several others, including show economic growth, widening economic inequality, and increases in the proportion of children living in mother-only families, had the opposite effect, pushing more children into poverty. Poverty is a common risk: One-third of all children will be poor for at least one year. For many, poverty lasts only a short while, but for a small percentage, poverty persists both throughout childhood and into the adult years. Poverty is not shared equally across different demographic groups. African-American children. Latino children, and children in mother-only families are disproportionately poor. Long-term poverty is even more concentrated than single-year poverty. In 1992, almost 90% of long-term poor children were African-American as compared to all poor children (single-year and long-term poor), of whom 60% were white. Both family structure and the labor market are implicated in long-term childhood poverty. Changes in employment of family members and changes in family composition are each strongly associated with transitions into and out of childhood poverty. Of these, changes in employment are the most important.

Understanding Child Outcomes within a Multiple Risk Model: Examining Parental Incarceration

“…Interestingly, poverty was shown to decrease the likelihood of both drug use and alcohol use by approximately 10% suggesting that it may be a protective factor against drug use. This finding is contradictory to research finding in the literature on the impact of poverty on children (Corcoran and Chaudry 1997;Duncan et al 1994;Duncan and Rodgers 1988;McLeod and Shanahan 1993).…”

“…The prevalence of each of the risk factors is higher in this sample than in the general population. Nationally, 2% of children have an incarcerated parent (Johnson and Waldfogel 2004), the poverty rate in the United States is approximately 13% (Corcoran and Chaudry 1997), approximately 6% of children have a parent addicted to substances (Grant 2000) and mentally ill parents are just as likely as those who are not mentally ill to parent at least one child (Ackerson 2003). In the current sample, 13% of children have a mentally ill parent, 11% have a parent that uses substances, 17% have an incarcerated parent, and 70% live in poverty.…”

Mediators and Adverse Effects of Child Poverty in the United States

“…55,56 Children being raised by samesex parents are twice as likely to live in poverty, compared with children living in households with heterosexual parents. 47 Black, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaska Native children are more likely to live in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty than are either Asian or white non-Hispanic children. Almost two-thirds of black, Hispanic, and American Indian/ Alaska Native children live in areas of concentrated poverty, compared with one-third of white children.…”

Perspectives and Future Directions

“…In 1999 an alarming 42% of children aged less than18 who lived in households headed by females lived in poverty, versus only 8% of children in households with both parents present (Federal Interagency Forum of Child and Family Statistics, 1997). Race and ethnicity play a key role in predicting the likelihood of a single-parent family structure as well as the socioeconomic status within these single-parent family households (Corcoran & Chaudry, 1997).…”