Childhood Poverty in America

Building off of my previous post and the discussion in the comments, here is some data on poverty among children in America. Keep in mind that most of this data was taken from the Census Department's Current Population Survey (unless otherwise noted) and does not count undocumented immigrants - the population most at risk for poverty.

• Children make up 26 percent of our country's population, but they are 39 percent of the people who live in poverty. Every day, 2,660 children are born into poverty in America.
  
• 19 percent of all children in the United States officially live in "poverty". That means that 14 million American children live below the government's ridiculously low poverty line of $22,050 per year for a family of FOUR.
• Research shows that, on average, families need an income of about twice the poverty level just to get by. 41 percent of all American children live in what the government classifies as "low-income households" - for 2009 that was $44,100 for a family of FOUR.
  
• 8 percent of children officially live in extreme poverty, classified as at or below 50 percent of the official poverty line. That's 6.2 million American children existing off of less than $11,000 per year for a family of FOUR.
• 11 percent of white children live in poor families. 35 percent of black children live in poor families. 15 percent of Asian children live in poor families. 31 percent of American Indian children live in poor families. And 31 percent of Hispanic children live in poor families.
  
• 41 percent of Hispanic children in North Carolina live under the poverty line, and that's not counting the vast majority of Hispanics in this state illegally.
  
• When you consider not just children living under the official poverty line, but also children in "low-income" families, 61 percent of black and Hispanic kids live in families that ain't getting by.

Poverty, especially childhood poverty, isn't what you think it is:

• 55 percent of children living in poor or low-income families have a parent who works full time year round. 26 percent of these children have parents that work part time.
• Only 20 percent have parents that do not work.
• 51 percent of poor and low-income families are headed by a single mom, but 36 percent have married parents. (NCCP study)
• One in five children born to migrant families are poor, while just 14 percent of native-born children are. And keep in mind, this is only legal/documented migrants.
• Parental education levels for children in poverty vary, but 36 percent have a high school diploma and only one-quarter, 7.3 million parents, have less than a high school education. Nearly 40 percent of parents with poor and low-income classified children have completed at least some college.

And the kicker...

These statistics are from 2008 and do not take into account the full impact of the recession. The situation today is probably much much worse.

"Between August 2008 and August 2009, the number of people receiving food stamps, or what are now called SNAP benefits, increased by 7.0 million, or 24 percent, as monthly caseloads skyrocketed from 29.5 to 36.5 million participants. This extraordinary increase means that roughly 3.4 million more children were receiving SNAP benefits in August 2009 than a year earlier, based on data showing that almost half (49 percent) of SNAP participants are children." (Brookings Institution - Jan 2010)