Misty Stanley sits with her daughters Kaylee (left) and Marabella at their home in Welch, West Virginia, on Sept. 9, 2019. McDowell County, West Virginia, is one of the poorest in the nation. Photo Credit: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post
Society USAThe World Gets Better for American Children, as Less and Less Live in Poverty
According to the latest available data, 2019 was the year that saw the biggest decline in the number of American children living in poverty, even reaching record lows, across all racial and ethnic groups.
If, since 2010, all major groups saw declines, the greatest is among the Black and Hispanic children. In the last nine years, the share of Black kids living in poverty went from 39% to 26%, and for the Hispanic kids, the share went from 35% to 21%. The number of Hispanic children hit a new low in 2019 with 3.9 million. That’s 2.2 million less impoverished children than almost a decade earlier, in 2010.
Among the American population, children younger than 18 years old represent 31% of all American living in poverty. Overall, the number of children living in poverty went from 16.3 million in 2010 to 10.5 million in 2019, going from 22% to 14% in the last nine years.
