Report Finds Number of Black Children in Deep Poverty Rising

April 30, 2003 – By SAM DILLON

The 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.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/30/national/30POOR.html?ex=1052710087&ei=1&en
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