Gains in Reducing Child Poverty, but Racial-Ethnic Disparities Persist

Abstract

In this brief, authors Jessica Carson, Marybeth Mattingly, and Andrew Schaefer use data from the American Community Survey to investigate patterns of child poverty across race-ethnicities and across regions and place types. They also explore changes in child poverty rates since 2014 and since the end of the Great Recession in 2009. The authors report that between 2014 and 2015, child poverty fell for all race-ethnicities except Asians. The largest declines in child poverty occurred among blacks and Hispanics, and the poverty gap between them and white and Asian children narrowed, although these groups’ poverty rates are far from converging. Given the well-established connection between child poverty and brain development, educational attainment, later labor market participation, and long-term health outcomes, the high disparities in child poverty in the United States are of particular concern. Closer attention to these disparities may nudge policy makers to think carefully about the context of place in efforts to alleviate poverty and increase youth opportunity