How has child poverty changed over the past decade?
Child poverty rates dropped dramatically in the 1990s, especially for blacks and Hispanics. Some driving forces included welfare reform and expansions in the EITC [Earned Income Tax Credit]. Economic changes played an even more major role. The ’90s were a big boon for everyone, so it’s not surprising that children were better off. But the size of the improvement did take people by surprise, especially the change in black child poverty. More recently, child poverty has climbed since the economic downturn in 2000-2001, though not to the level of the early 1990s. So for seven or eight years, child poverty fell dramatically. As the economy cooled in the past three to four years—the most recent data are from 2004—child poverty inched back up. We don’t know where it’s going to go in the next few years. Interestingly, my research shows that historical explanations for child poverty, which target family structure, don’t say as much about recent changes in child poverty as job market conditions
