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Susan Dickstein
POVERTY
One of every five children in the United States lives
in a family with income below the official poverty
level, despite general agreement that this poverty
threshold ($14,630 in 2001 for a family of three) is
out of date and too low when considering current
housing costs and other family expenditures (e.g.,
child care, health care). Arloc Sherman of the Chil-
dren’s Defense Fund reports that one in three chil-
dren in this country will experience at least one year
of poverty before they reach age sixteen. Minority
children are disproportionately represented, espe-
cially among those who experience persistent pover-
ty. As summarized by Suniya Luthar of Columbia
University, one in four African-American children ex-
periences ten to fifteen years of poverty; this is a rare
phenomenon for Anglo children.
When addressing the incidence of childhood pov-
erty, it is also important to consider what Daniel Her-
nandez of the National Academy of Sciences and
Institute of Medicine defines as relative poverty. This
is the minimum income required to purchase those
items that society considers essential to decent and re-
spectable living, the minimum level required to avoid
the stigma of living in inhumane conditions. Her-
nandez defined relative poverty as 50 percent of the
median income for a given year, adjusted for family
size. Given this definition, about one in three children
in the United States lives in relative poverty.Causes of Poverty
What are the causes of childhood poverty or low
family income? The most obvious answer is that the
parents make low wages for their work. Full-time
work at or near the minimum wage is insufficient to
move even a small family above the poverty level.
What characteristics are associated with low income
for families? Parents in poor families tend to be youn-
ger and less educated than parents in nonpoor fami-
lies; they are also more likely to be single or divorced.
The rise in childhood poverty since the 1970s is asso-
ciated with an increase in single-parent families. It
would be a mistake, however, to view single parent-
hood as a major cause of child poverty independent
of economic factors. Custodial parents experience
significant declines in family income following di-
vorce or separation. Also, single parents often have
difficulty balancing the demands of parenting (e.g.,
picking up a sick child from child care) and the de-
mands of job advancement or promotion. Finally,
family stress and conflict caused by poverty can be re-
sponsible for divorce or separation; Sherman reports
that poor parents separate twice as frequently as do
nonpoor parents.Consequences of Poverty
Children who grow up in families with low in-
comes are significantly more likely to experience a
wide range of problems and poor developmental out-
comes than children from wealthier families. Greg
Duncan from Northwestern University and Jeanne
Brooks-Gunn from Columbia University have sum-
marized extensive research findings that substantiate
significant associations between poverty and chil-
dren’s health, cognitive development, behavior prob-
lems, emotional well being, and problems with school
achievement. For example, children from poor fami-
lies are 1.7 times more likely to be born with low
birthweight, 2 times more likely to repeat a grade in
school, 2 times more likely to drop out of school, and
3.1 times more likely to have an out-of-wedlock birth
than children from nonpoor families. The specific as-
pects of poverty that are most destructive, as well as
the specific outcomes of poverty, vary across different
ages and developmental levels. For example, inade-
quate nutrition is associated with low birthweight, an
important measure of well-being for infants that is
predictive of later behavior problems and poor school
achievement. As another example, the effects of in-POVERTY 315