Two in three poor children have parents who work but whose earnings can't lift their families above the poverty level.
In 1994, 38% of all poor children in the U.S. lived in a "working-poor" family, defined as one in which at least one parent worked 50 or more weeks during the year or received child-support payments from a noncustodial parent. Another third of poor children live with parents who work less than 50 weeks a year, reports the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a nonprofit research organization in Baltimore.
A total of 5.6 million children lived in working-poor families in 1994, up from 3.4 million 20 years earlier. They represented, 8.2% of all American children, up from 5.2% in 1974. All told, three-fourths of the increase in children in poverty in the past two decades has been among those who live with a parent who works at least one week a year; almost half (47%) have parents who work 50 or more weeks.
Poor children are less likely to live on public assistance than on the money their parents earn. Twenty-six percent live in families that receive public assistance and have no earnings, but 44% live in families with earnings, and no public assistance. Another 18% receive both earnings and public-assistance income, and 10% subsist only on other sources of money such as child support and Social Security.
Most working parents of poor children have low levels of education, which explains in large part their low earnings. Seventy-three percent of these parents never attended college. Even so, one in four children in working-poor families has a working parent with at least some college education.
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