Child poverty grows
TEXT OF STORY
SCOTT JAGOW: Some bad news for children in this country, from a new Annie E. Casey Foundation report. From the Work and Family Desk, Marketplace’s Hillary Wicai has more.
HILLARY WICAI: The Kids Count report found more than 13 million children in poverty in 2004 — an increase of more than a million in four years. And more children are living in families where neither parent is employed full-time.
Douglas Nelson is President of the Foundation.
DOUGLAS NELSON:“Some of the progress we were making in the late 1990s has deteriorated.”
Alan Berube at the Brookings Institution says that direction leads to bad results.
ALAN BERUBE:“Parental income and parental work are correlated with a whole host of outcomes for children, like their behavior and eventually their own connection to the labor market when they age into their teenage years and adulthood.”
The annual list of indicators does have good news. The teen birth rate has continued to decline and the high school dropout rate has improved.
In Washington, I’m Hillary Wicai for Marketplace.
Stories You Might Like
There’s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.
