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- NEW YORK (Reuters) - The number of young children in the United States
living in poverty grew to an average of 5.9 million a year in the mid-1990s,
with the biggest increases in California, New York and Texas, according
to a study released on Thursday. The nation's rate of young child poverty
in the years 1992 to 1996 grew to 24.7 percent, up 12 percent from a study
of the years 1979 to 1983, according to the report by the National Center
for Children in Poverty, a non-profit research center at the Columbia School
of Public Health. The study noted three factors -- single motherhood, parental
education and parental employment -- as significant causes of such poverty,
said Julian Palmer, editor of the study. ``A third of the increase in childhood
poverty can be explained by these three factors,'' he said. But he added,
myriad factors account for the balance of the increase.
``There's a lot more to the story,'' he said. ``There's no magic bullet.''
More than half the increase in the number of poor children was found in
the most populous states of California, New York and Texas, the study found.
Specifically, the number of poor children under the age of six in those
three states combined rose to an average of 2 million a year in 1992 to
1996, it said. ``Close to three in every ten children under the age of
six in those states is living in poverty,'' Palmer said. Rates of children's
poverty grew significantly in Oklahoma, Montana, Arizona, West Virgnia
and Louisiana, while the rates fell dramatically in New Jersey and Vermont,
it said. California, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, Texas,
West Virginia and the District of Columbia all had rates significantly
higher than the national average, it said. The study used the federal government's
poverty line, which was an income of $16,036 for a family of four in 1996,
Palmer said.
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