1 in 5 Children Live in Poverty in U.S.
June 3, 2014 – 1:09 PM
By Ali Meyer
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CNSNews.com) – One in five children under age 18, or 21.3%, are living in poverty in the United States, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
In 2012, there were 15,437,000 children under 18 years old, or 21.3%, who were classified in the “below poverty” threshold, according to the Census.
“The incidence of poverty rates varies widely across the population according to age, education, labor force attachment, family living arrangements, and area of residence, among other factors. Under the official poverty definition, an average family of four was considered poor in 2012 if its pre-tax cash income for the year was below $23,492,” according to a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report entitled, Poverty in the United States: 2012.
“The Census Bureau’s poverty thresholds form the basis for statistical estimates of poverty in the United States,” reads the report. “The thresholds reflect crude estimates of the amount of money individuals or families, of various size and composition, need per year to purchase a basket of goods and services deemed as ‘minimally adequate,’ according to the living standards of the early 1960s.”
“Persons are considered poor, for statistical purposes, if their family’s countable money income is below its corresponding poverty threshold,” the CRS states.
The Census has been tracking these data since 1959, when the percentage of children under 18 living in poverty was 26.9%. In 1964, when then-President Lyndon B. Johnson announced the War on Poverty, the percentage of children living in poverty was 22.7%. Since then until now, the percentage has decreased by only 6.2%.
“In 2012, over one in five children (21.3%) in the United States, some 15.4 million, were poor – both their poverty rate and estimated number poor were statistically unchanged from 2011,” said the CRS report. “The lowest recorded rate of child poverty was in 1969, when 13.8% of children were counted as poor.”
https://cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/1-5-children-live-poverty-us
Maybe our “elite 1%” municipal pensioners in Ridgewood in the +$100K pension club, population 12 (but growing to 20 by 2015 and +30 by 2016), can each sponsor one or two of these underpriviledged American children to live with them here in Ridgewood and attend our public schools? They pay the taxes anyway, and all seem to love our BOE. Given they’ve retired well before 65, they should still have the energy (and definitely the free time) to help give better opportunities to these kids and re-engage with the community instead of whining constantly on this blog about all of their “pretentious neighbors” raising “spoiled brats”. Let’s see them put their money where their mouth is, and set up a scholarship fund that will select kids based on merit to live with them and attend our schools. It’s win win.
Why limit it to pensioners? I assume that you are volunteering to do the same yourself. Perhaps you can set up and run a program to help these unfortunate children. How thoroughly altruistic of you. I look forward to hearing more of your ideas.
I think it’s a great idea – we don’t have as many empty nesters in Ridgewood as before, so pensioners here in their 50s make sense.
They keep raising the poverty line to ensure that there is a perpetual poverty class – with a large percentage of that class being statistically poor rather than actually poor.