April 30, 2003

Report Finds Number of Black Children in Deep Poverty Rising

he number of black Americans under 18 years old who live in extreme poverty has risen sharply since 2000 and is now at its highest level since the government began collecting such figures in 1980, according to a study by the Children's Defense Fund, a child welfare advocacy group.

In 2001, the last year for which government figures are available, nearly one million black children were living in families with after-tax incomes that were less than half the amount used to define poverty, said the new study, which was based on Census Bureau statistics and is to be released publicly today. The defense fund provided a copy in advance to The New York Times.

The poverty line for a family of three was about $14,100, the study said, so a family of three living in extreme poverty had a disposable income of about $7,060, the study said.
In early 2000, only 686,000 black children were that poor, the study said, indicating that the economic circumstances of the United States' poorest black families deteriorated sharply from 2000 to 2001.
Deborah Weinstein, the director of the division of the Children's Defense Fund, who oversaw the research that produced the study, said its release had been timed to influence the national debate over President Bush's tax cut proposal, which her group opposes, as well as deliberations in the Senate, where the 1996 law that reshaped the nation's welfare landscape is up for reauthorization.
The Children's Defense Fund has been a consistent critic of the vast overhaul of the American welfare system carried out during the 1990's.
"The study shows that in the first recession since the welfare law took effect, black children who have the fewest protections are falling into extreme poverty in record numbers," Ms. Weinstein said. "So as we consider our federal policies, are we going to help children who need help the most, or rich people who don't need help at all?"
Supporters of the welfare changes of the past decade characterized the study as an effort to focus on a narrow slice of bad news, while ignoring what the supporters see as the overwhelming benefits that the overhaul had for most poor families.
"The Children's Defense Fund searched with a laser for something that was negative to say, because the poverty picture in America since the 1996 welfare reform is unambiguously positive," said Jason Turner, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, who as New York City's commissioner of human resources from 1998 to 2001 was in charge of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's welfare policies.
The study focused not just on poor black children, but specifically on black children living in extreme poverty.
Mr. Turner said that such a study ignored the gains made in recent years by the larger population of poor black children. In 1995, he said, 41.5 percent of black children lived below the poverty line, but by 2001, only 30 percent were living in poverty.
The generalized decline in poverty among black children was not in dispute.
"Recent studies show overall poverty has declined among black children, but fail to show the record-breaking increase in extreme poverty among these children," the Children's Defense Fund said in a statement that accompanied the study. "Today's analysis further shows that safety nets for the worst-off families are being eroded by Bush administration policies that cause fewer extremely poor children of all races to receive cash and in-kind assistance."
Margy Waller, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution who was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton for welfare issues, said that other recent research, including her own, had supported the conclusion that the gradual disappearance of safety net programs had driven some of the country's poorest families deeper into poverty, even as the status of other poor families improved. Mr. Clinton signed the 1996 overhaul of the welfare system into law.
"This data is not surprising to me because other work I've seen has shown that since the welfare reform there have been some increases in extreme poverty, resulting from lost public benefits," Ms. Waller said. "I think that the '96 welfare reform law has been beneficial for many families. But we also know that some families are worse off."