(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The number of Black children in poverty may have outpaced Whites for the first time since the U.S. Census began collecting this data in 1974, though there are three times as many White children as Black children living in the United States, according to a study released this week by the Pew Research Center.
The overall poverty rate among American children has declined since 2010 as the nation’s economy eked its way back to recovery. But while most groups saw improvement, poverty rates remained virtually unchanged among Black children, the group most likely to live in poverty, the analysis of Census data showed.
Overall, 14.7 million, or 20 percent of children in the U.S., lived in poverty in 2013 – down from 16.3 million, or 22 percent, in 2010. While the poverty rate among Hispanic, White and Asian children dropped during the period, however, the rate stagnated at 38 percent among Black children.
In fact, “Black children were almost four times as likely as White or Asian children to be living in poverty in 2013, and significantly more likely than Hispanic children,” according to the report’s authors, Eileen Patten and Jens Manuel Krogstad.
Even in sheer numbers, the share of Black children in poverty eclipsed Whites—the number of impoverished White children (4.1 million) dipped below the number of impoverished African-American children (4.2 million) in 2013, for perhaps the first time in Census history.
While the rate of Black children living in poverty outpaced all other groups, however, there were still more Hispanic children living in poverty in 2013 (5.4 million) than any other group.
Children in Black and Hispanic communities also were overrepresented among their indigent populations.