Growing up poor in U.S. impacts adult life
By Victoria Stilwell, Bloomberg Business
We already know that poverty disproportionately affects children, with about 20 percent of those younger than 18 impoverished versus about 13 percent of adults. New research from the Urban Institute in Washington shows child poverty is actually more common than those headline statistics suggest, and that has consequences for success in adulthood.
Some 39 percent of children are poor for at least one year before they reach their 18th birthday, according to Caroline Ratcliffe, a senior fellow and economist at Urban. For black children, that statistic is 75 percent, compared with 30 percent of whites.
A child is identified as poor if they live in a family whose gross annual money income is below the federal poverty level. For a family of three in 2015, that threshold is $20,090, according to the paper.
