Child Poverty in America

[Mass]

So sad and shocking, though I guess it is not that surprising (I just wonder how this was rated. My guess is that healthcare has a lot to do with that, but not only).


http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/12/child_poverty_in_america.php

I’d like to think that most Americans are just too insular to realize that our child poverty rate is absolutely off the charts in international terms, even when compared to other high-immigration Anglophone countries, to say nothing of the Nordics:
The alternative to people just not knowing is the idea that people just don’t care which, frankly, is an upsetting possibility I’d prefer not to believe in.
...

[smokey nj]

1. K&R

[Igel]

2. It gets mentioned in the MSM from time to time.

Usually without context. Here's where critical thinking comes into play: We have numbers. What do they mean, what do they include, who do they include? Are they drawn up the same way in each country? Do they serve somebody's interests?

There are a bunch of reasons for the differences. Some are demographic. Americans have a higher average fertility, so we have more kids. Moreover, a lot of that fertility is concentrated in two overlapping groups: Those with less education and minorities. Both are risk factors for single parent families and lower paying jobs.

As fertilities come to be concentrated in those two groups, the child poverty rate *has* to rise. Keep in mind that the income level needed to stay out of poverty is a moving target: A family with one kid can be "pushed into" poverty by having a second kid. Higher fertility matters.

But there's also a bookkeeping reason: Most other countries include all receipts by a family in determining family income. In the US, we use earned income. A single mother in poverty with three kids makes $18k in a year, and that's her income; food stamps, subsidized housing, Medicare/-aid/-cal, subsidized meals for the kids, etc., etc. ... not income. Her kids are in poverty, and it's always a mystery how that income covers all the bases. A British single mother makes the equivalent in pounds in a year, and that's *not* all of her income. In most other countries some or all of the non-earned income would count. It would lower the poverty rate by some amount.

The difference at least deserves an explanatory footnote. The best I've seen is some European committee's footnote concisely indicating the source of their numbers, without indicating that the numbers mean different things. Then you have to do some serious digging to get at why the numbers are so different. When you're done digging, you have a good idea as to why the numbers differ. But that doesn't help you in the least to make them comparable, because you have to actually find data left out of the reports to adjust the numbers properly.

There are slight differences between the numbers for other countries. Some include illegal immigrants; some don't. Some include legal resident non-citizens; some don't. In some, the children of non-citizens aren't citizens, and that can matter. Some include all aid, some just financial aid. Some look at households, i.e., who's under one roof, some look at just parents/children or who are dependents on the wage earner.

Year-over-year numbers are useful; how they're compiled doesn't typically change much from year to year. The others just leave me wondering what they could possibly mean, and wishing for some sort of standard metric.