Blog 9

Blog 9

An income of $20,000 a year for a family of four is below the federal poverty level and that is exactly where nearly 13 Million children land. From 2000 to 2005 this number increased by 11% that’s adding another 1.3 million children who are living in poverty. The accuracy of these numbers has been greatly questioned and is being acknowledged as inadequate. In the 1950’s data collected showed that families spent one-third of their income on food. Now a days families spend far less than one-third of their income on food due to the disproportionately growth costs of housing, transportation and childcare. The system is being stamped as flaw to do the fact that there are things that should be looked at and considered when determining ones poverty level such as: child-care, transportation and work related expense. The systems also take individuals and lumps them into groups under standard categories rather than considering the varying needs of individual families. Who are these nearly 13 million children living in poverty? A graph breaks down the children living in poverty by race which shows us that 10% are white children, 11% are Asian children, 28% are Latino children, 29% are American Indian children and 35% are black children. If we take into account the States of California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Texas which hold the highest number of immigrants we learn that children with immigrant parents have higher chance of being poor than that children born to native parents. Poverty is not something that will ever go away, yet changes need to be made to stop the rise in numbers of children living below the poverty level. One of the greatest challenges parents face to day is making work pay. Without regular increases in minimum wage to combat the rising costs of food, housing and transportation families have to go without choosing to forgo adequate childcare and healthy meals to compensate. The scales have gotten to balance out more equally in order to change the number of children living below the federal poverty level