Why so many children are poor

Future of Children

Volumn 7, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 25-39

  Betson, David M ^a   Michael, Robert T ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HUMAN; INCOME; POVERTY; REVIEW; SOCIOECONOMICS; STATISTICAL ANALYSIS; UNITED STATES;

EID: 0031400387     PISSN: 10548289     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/1602385     Document Type: Review

References (17)

1. For an alternative view about the trend in child poverty over the past two decades, see Jencks, C., and Mayer, S.E. Do official poverty rates provide useful information about trends in children's economic welfare? Institute for Policy Research Working Paper, April 18, 1996.
2. Lewit, E.M. Child indicators: Children in poverty. The Future of Children (Spring 1993) 3,1:176-82.
3. One reason this is only a crude approximation is that the actual income has been taken by source - that is, the earnings, the Social Security, and so on - as if the presence or absence of children has no effect on these amounts, but in fact it surely does. There are important behavioral responses to the presence of children in terms of men and women's labor supply, the family's savings, and family stability and structure. The computations ignore these responses and simply count whether the income received in the year is sufficient to keep the adults living in the household out of poverty.
4. These calculations and all others in the first section of this article are based on calculations by the authors using data from the March 1993 Current Population Survey. See Current Population Survey (CD-ROM), U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1980-94. Available from U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, P.O. Box 277943, Atlanta, GA 30384-7943.
5. There have been many excellent surveys of research findings on the determinants of earnings. These include Willis, R.J. Wage determinants: A survey and reinterpretation of human capital earnings functions. In Handbook of Labor Economics. O. Ashenfelter and R. Layard, eds. Amsterdam: North Holland, 1986, pp. 525-602; Levy, F., and Murnane, R.J. U.S. earnings levels and earnings inequality: A review of recent trends and proposed explanations. Journal of Economic Literature (September 1992) 30,3:1333-81; and Blinder, A.S. The level and distribution of economic well-being. In The American Economy in Transition. M. Feldstein, ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press for NBER, 1980, pp. 415-99.
6. There have been many excellent surveys of research findings on the determinants of earnings. These include Willis, R.J. Wage determinants: A survey and reinterpretation of human capital earnings functions. In Handbook of Labor Economics. O. Ashenfelter and R. Layard, eds. Amsterdam: North Holland, 1986, pp. 525-602; Levy, F., and Murnane, R.J. U.S. earnings levels and earnings inequality: A review of recent trends and proposed explanations. Journal of Economic Literature (September 1992) 30,3:1333-81; and Blinder, A.S. The level and distribution of economic well-being. In The American Economy in Transition. M. Feldstein, ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press for NBER, 1980, pp. 415-99.
7. There have been many excellent surveys of research findings on the determinants of earnings. These include Willis, R.J. Wage determinants: A survey and reinterpretation of human capital earnings functions. In Handbook of Labor Economics. O. Ashenfelter and R. Layard, eds. Amsterdam: North Holland, 1986, pp. 525-602; Levy, F., and Murnane, R.J. U.S. earnings levels and earnings inequality: A review of recent trends and proposed explanations. Journal of Economic Literature (September 1992) 30,3:1333-81; and Blinder, A.S. The level and distribution of economic well-being. In The American Economy in Transition. M. Feldstein, ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press for NBER, 1980, pp. 415-99.
8. See Sawhill, I.V. Poverty in the U.S.: Why is it so persistent? Journal of Economic Literature (September 1988) 26,3:1073-119, and Lewit, E.M. Why is poverty increasing among children? The Future of Children. (Summer/Fall 1993) 3,2:198-207.
9. See Sawhill, I.V. Poverty in the U.S.: Why is it so persistent? Journal of Economic Literature (September 1988) 26,3:1073-119, and Lewit, E.M. Why is poverty increasing among children? The Future of Children. (Summer/Fall 1993) 3,2:198-207.
10. Table 1 includes adults of all ages, both with and without children. Although the number of children ever born is negatively associated with the parent's educational attainment, in Table 1 that relationship is obscured by the inclusion of elderly adults who are both unlikely to have children present and quite likely to have a relatively low level of educational attainment.
11. This "poverty gap" is only a first approximation and would be a minimum amount because additional cash assistance would tend to lower the incentives of individuals to support themselves, so even more assistance might be needed to "fill" it.
12. To see why the difference between the adult poverty rate and the child poverty rate can be explained by the fact that poor families have more children per adult than the nonpoor pop ulation, consider the following example. The 14.4% poverty rate for adults with children conveys the information that 144 out of every 1,000 adults with children in the population will be poor. If every adult in the population has on average one child, then that 1,000 adults would represent 1,000 children as well. But if poor adults have, on average, say, 1.5 children, then the 144 poor adults would be living with 216 children, and the poverty rate for children would be about 40% higher than the poverty rate for adults.
13. Citro, C.F., and Michael, R.T., eds. Measuring poverty: A new approach. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1995.
14. Programs included in this count were all food assistance programs, including food stamps and school breakfast and lunch programs, all housing programs such as Section 8 housing, and energy assistance programs.
15. The NRC panel recommended that these child care costs be capped at $2,400 for one child and $4,800 for two or more children.
16. The Gallup poll question was not asked after 1992. Denton R. Vaughan, Office of Research and Statistics, Social Security Administration, Washington, DC. Personal communication, February 10, 1997.
17. Interpolations by the authors supplied missing data points for the following years: 1955-56, 1965, 1968, 1972, 1987-88, and 1990-91.