One in Six U.S. Children Lives in Poverty: Report

One in six children in America lives in poverty and poor and middle-income families are finding it harder to make ends meet, according to a report released on Thursday.

The Children's Defense Fund annual "green book" on the state of America's children, said government poverty figures for 1999 showed over 12 million of America's children lived below the federal poverty level of $13,290 a year for a three-person family.

The U.S. child poverty rate is roughly twice as high as the rates in Canada and Germany, the report said, and at least six times higher than France, Belgium or Austria.

In an era of unparalleled prosperity, the fund said so many children lived in poverty because of their parents' low-paying jobs, more single-parent families and a lack of strong government support for low and moderate-income families.

Children living with married parents were far less likely to be poor -- 8.4 percent of children in married-couple families were poor in 1999 compared with 42 percent of all children with a single mother, the report said.

The report said two out of three mothers worked outside the home in March 2000, up from fewer than one in two 20 years ago. The biggest employment rise was among low-income, single mothers, it said, adding that they were spending more and more on child care costs but not earning better wages.

Poor families spent 35 percent of their income on child care compared with 7 percent by richer families, the fund said.

Highlighting a child care crisis in America, the report said nearly 7 million children aged 5 to 14 cared for themselves on a regular basis without any adult supervision while a parent was at work.

The report also pointed to inadequate health care coverage for millions of children but said there had been an improvement in recent years. In 1999, 10.8 million children aged 18 and under lacked health coverage, down from 11.9 million in 1998.

Children of color were far more likely to be uninsured, with one out of six black children and one out of four Hispanic children not covered compared with one out of 11 white children. Children in immigrant families, in particular, are likely to lack health coverage and access to health care.

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