Children in Poverty

Eugene M. Lewit, Ph.D., is director of research and grants for economics at the Center for the Future of Children. his T Child Indicators section focuses on children in poverty. The annual Census Bureau report on income and poverty in the United States, issued in September 1992, revealed that 35.7 million people lived in poverty in 1991. Of these impoverished Americans, 13.7 million were children under 18 years of age. During 1991, some 943,000 more children lived in poverty than in 1990, an increase of 7.4%. Because the poverty rate tends to move with the unemployment rate—which continued to rise in 1992 as it had since 1989—it is likely that the number of poor children in the United States is substantially higher today than it was in 1991. Poor children encounter multiple problems during their childhood. They are more likely than their more affluent counterparts to go hungry, to be inadequately housed and clothed, and to receive inadequate medical care as well as insufficient social support. Poor children face increased risk of death, infectious and chronic illness, and injury from accidents and violence. In-depth analyses of the effects of environmental stresses and family problems on children’s mental health suggest that in urban poverty areas, poor children who live with violence, deteriorating housing, and disrupted living conditions are at high risk for depression, low self-confidence, and conflict with peers and authority figures.