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More Than One in Five Children Remain in Poverty
If further proof is needed that the so-called War on Poverty continues to fail, the latest report from the Census Bureauhas just provided it: 21.3 percent of children under the age of 18 — more than one in five — are living in poverty. In 1964, the year that then-President Lyndon Johnson declared the federal government’s war on poverty, that percentage was 22.7 percent.
The news from the Census Bureau provides additional evidence of the war’s failure: “The lowest recorded rate of child poverty was in 1969, when 13.8 percent of children were counted as poor.” In simple terms, as the cost of the War on Poverty has escalated from $178 billion a year (in present dollar terms) to nearly a trillion dollars a year, the poverty level among children has risen by more than 50 percent.
But among single female-headed families the numbers are vastly worse, said the bureau:
In 2012, a child living in a single female-headed family was well over four times more likely to be poor than a child living in a married-couple family.
In 2012, among all children living in single female-headed families, 47.2 percent were poor.
Back in 2010 the Associated Press noted that most of those single female-headed families are black. Wrote the AP:
Children of unmarried mothers of any race are more likely to perform poorly in school, go to prison, use drugs, be poor as adults, and have their own children out of wedlock.
Source: http://rinf.com/alt-news/money/one-five-children-remain-poverty/
