According to the Annie. E Casey Foundation an annual analysis suggests that child poverty rates in the United States have been rising since the early 2000’s. The annual report is called the Kids Count Data Book, it has the results from a survey of the well being of children in 50 states and it ranks the states on 10 core indicators and overall well being.
This was the 25th edition of the survey and it is devastating to see that the results suggest 23% of American children in 2012 were living below the poverty line.
An interesting observation is that poverty rates in the US dropped from the 1990’s to 2000 and then saw a steady increase from the early 2000’s to now.
Patrick McCarthy, the CEO of the foundation suggests that these low income families still haven’t been able to recover from the Great Recession. Since not many resources are made available by the government programs and transportation, housing and food costs are increasing which not only makes it difficult to survive but fuels the cycle of poverty so the poor either stay poor or keep getting worst.
Another thing that the report suggests is the disparity of statistics between different regions of the United States and the different races. The general finding was that Southern States were relatively lacking on the children’s well being as opposed to the Northern States. The five Southern states which are lowest in children’s well being ratings are Arizona, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico and Mississippi. The top five states happen to be Iowa, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Minnesota.
Patrick McCarthy points out that some of the biggest racial disparities are in poverty. Latino, African American and Native American groups suffer from poverty much more than the rest of the ethnic groups and form some of the poorest communities in the US. McCarthy also referred to another horrible reality which is just devastating. He says that around half of the African American kids live in households where there is no stable income. Lets hope this report helps in some productive reflection from the concerned authorities.