The Anne E. Casey Foundation released its “2011 Kids Count Data Book” on Aug. 17, and it did not make for encouraging reading. According to the report, after showing historic improvement in the period 1996 to 2000, when the child poverty rate fell by nearly 30 percent, the condition of children in the United States has been in significant decline. The cause is not hard to identify: growing national poverty. Anne E. Casey’s researchers report: “The economic recession of the past few years effectively wiped out all of the gains we made in cutting child poverty in the late 1990s.” In 2009, 20 percent of children (14.7 million) were growing up poor, up from 17 percent in 2000. As the jobless recovery continues, just about every state in the nation recorded increasing numbers of children growing up in households without a breadwinner, a startling 31 percent of U.S. families in 2008.
U.S. Childhood Gets Poor Grades
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
Pope Francis' continued "gradual, slight improvement" is a sign that he is responding to the therapy he is receiving at Rome's Gemelli hospital, his doctors said.
Pope Francis had “a restful night and woke up shortly after 8 a.m.,” the Vatican said on Friday morning, March 7. It was his 22nd night in Rome’s Gemelli Hospital.
Just as Popes John Paul II’s and Benedict’s final days revealed their understandings of the papacy, Francis’ illness has revealed him once again as the world’s parish priest, suffering close to his people.
A reflection for the First Monday of Lent, by Ashley McKinless