Poverty Rate Among State’s Children Rises Sharply

SACRAMENTO —  The number of young children living in poverty in California climbed dramatically over the last two decades, leaving nearly one in three impoverished by 1996, according to a Columbia University study released Thursday.

The state’s rate of poverty increased by 24%--12 percentage points higher than the national average--mirroring similar upswings in other populous states, researchers found.

The new statistics represent a big change for California, they said, because 20 years ago it was not a high-poverty state and the number of poor children did not exceed the national average. Since 1996--the year of the most recent statistics--the economy has improved, but that may not greatly improve the child poverty picture, researchers said.

The study examining poverty rates among children under 6 found wide variations across the country. California, Texas and New York showed huge increases while Vermont, New Jersey and Delaware recorded significant drops.

The sharp divergence surprised researchers, and they were unsure of the causes. However, they noted that the states experiencing an upsurge in child poverty often had high rates of immigration and high numbers of preschoolers who lived with single mothers with little education.

“The differences between states were much greater than we thought they would be,” said Julian Palmer, the editor of the report at the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia. “We found everything from a 53% increase to a 39% fall. That is a tremendous variation.”

Nationally, the number of children living in poverty jumped from 4.4 million in the early 1980s to 5.9 million in the mid-1990s. Palmer said that means poverty touches nearly one in four young children in the United States.

Much of the rise, the study found, could be attributed to three populous states--California, New York and Texas--where the combined number of poor children rose from an average of 1.2 million in the early 1980s to an average of 2 million in the mid-1990s.

California alone has nearly 1 million children under 6 who live in poverty, the study found. And nearly half the children in the state live in or near poverty.

“There are huge numbers of families in California,” Palmer said, “that are just one or two paychecks away from poverty.”

Although the study did not examine federal data after 1996, Palmer said he does not believe the economic upturn will change the picture.

“Over the last 20 years, the economy has grown quite a lot, but so has child poverty,” Palmer said. “So relying on economic growth alone won’t necessarily help lower-income families.”

Eloise Anderson, director of the state’s Department of Social Services, attributed California’s recent emergence as a high child-poverty state to the influx of immigrants, and particularly undocumented immigrants.

“We have a lot of families here whose children may be citizens, but their parents are not,” she said. “They have no real access to what I call above-ground work, which means their wages are depressed.”

While documented workers do have access to more opportunities than those who are not, Anderson said they often are disadvantaged because of language barriers and inadequate job skills.

Although the study did not examine the causes of child poverty in the country, it noted that California and the other states with the largest numbers of poor children also have strong flows of immigration.

Using data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, the study compared poverty trends from 1992 to 1996 with those between 1979 and 1983. Poverty in 1996 was defined as an annual income of $16,000 or less for a family of four, near poverty as an income of $30,000 or less and extreme poverty as $8,000 or less.

The study was conducted to provide states with benchmarks to use when they track the effect of welfare reforms on child poverty.

A 1996 federal welfare overhaul requires states to provide an annual estimate of child poverty. If states report an increase of 5% or more attributed to welfare reform, they are required to file a plan with the federal government for reducing their poverty rate.

States were supposed to submit the first estimate in May, but federal officials postponed that deadline to give them time to devise a common method for determining child poverty.

“It’s critically important that the government develop the methodology to track what happens to children in poverty so we can be sure welfare reform is helping and not hurting our kids,” Palmer said.

Robert Fellmeth, director of the San Diego-based Children’s Advocacy Institute, said the Columbia study may have underestimated the extent of child poverty in California because it used federal poverty definitions that do not adequately account for the high cost of housing and transportation that California residents face.

Nor do the figures show, he said, the impact of welfare reform on immigrant families who have lost food stamps and other benefits in the past few years.

“The numbers in terms of California are misleadingly favorable,” he said.

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The Youngest Poor

States with the most children under age in poverty, 1992-96

U.S. total: 5,877,075

California: 950,269

Texas: 572,180

New York: 464,551

Florida: 313,231

Illinois: 271,889

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Between the survey periods of 1979-83 and 1992-96, the proportion of children under age 6 living in poverty in California rose by 24%, compared with a national increase of 12%.

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1996 Rate % Change California 29% 24% Texas 30% 24% New York 29% 21% Florida 27% 1% Illinois 24% 4%

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Source: National Center for Children in Poverty