More U.S. kids in poverty than people in your state?

Oct. 19, 2011 — Child poverty in the United States has never been a pretty picture, and it has gotten worse over the course of the last several years. To put the current picture is some perspective, we compared the population of each state to national figures for 2010 on total number of children under 18 in poverty. Only four states have a total population larger than the number of children in poverty in the U.S. We also included the following subsets of children in poverty: white, non-Hispanics; black, non-Hispanics; and Hispanics of any race. The populations of each of 24 states are smaller than the number of black, non-Hispanic children in poverty throughout the U.S. The corresponding number for white, non-Hispanic children is 28 states, and that for Hispanic children is 37 states.

Find data on child poverty trends from 2002 to 2010 by going to page 2.

The graph below allows you to view either the number of children in poverty or the child poverty rate for selected racial and ethnic groups. For each, both number and rate has has risen since 2002. The child poverty rate for non-Hispanic blacks and for Hispanics has been dramatically higher than for whites in 2002, but the gap has grown even larger in the ensuing years.

Note that data are presented for non-Hispanic blacks to avoid the problem of double-counting. (Presenting data for all blacks means that Hispanic blacks are counted once in the racial category "black" and once in the ethnic or national origin category "Hispanic.") As it happens, the difference in this case is marginal in terms of poverty rate (in raw numbers, the difference for 2010 is 273,000).

A recent report from Pew Hispanic Center, which does count all blacks, has a wealth of additional child poverty data and analysis. It is entitled The Toll of the Great Recession.