Yes, the US Still Has a Child Poverty Problem
The New York Times released a big story this week declaring that child poverty has plummeted over the last thirty years. But their numbers are misleading: unlike social democratic countries, the US is still plagued by sky-high child poverty.
The OECD relative child poverty rate in the United States was 21 percent in 2019. By comparison, in 2018, Finland’s child poverty rate was 3.5 percent, and Denmark’s was 4.9 percent. (Getty Images)
Jason DeParle at the New York Times had a story yesterday about a new study with an apparently surprising conclusion: “Child poverty has fallen 59 percent since 1993, with need receding on nearly every front.”
The study DeParle discusses in his piece is a seven-author behemoth published at Child Trends. In it, Dana Thomson uses a dataset produced by various Columbia University researchers seven years ago to demonstrate that “the past quarter century witnessed an unprecedented decline in child poverty rates.” This bit of introductory text is accompanied by the following graph.
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.