Percent of children considered to be poor (<100% FPG)
Measure Overview
IMPORTANT NOTE: This measure has been retired. SHADAC is no longer updating this measure.
In order to maintain State Health Compare (SHC) as a relevant and current resource for data users, SHADAC regularly evaluates SHC measures to ensure they inform current health care and health policy discussions. We also want to be able to update measures consistently with recent data.
As a part of this process, SHADAC retires existing measures if they can no longer be updated, are no longer relevant, are little used by SHC users, or fall outside of SHADAC’s areas of focus.
You can still access this measure’s data & visualizations, but it will not be updated moving forward. If you’d like to explore active related measures, check out some of the following:
Children who grow up in poverty often the lack the nutrition, shelter, sanitation, health care, and education they need to thrive and become healthy adults. The short-term effects of childhood poverty—including difficulties like hunger, housing instability, and low academic achievement—can lead to long-term health consequences, such as increased risk of heart disease, obesity, asthma, and mental illness. Given the significant impact of childhood poverty on an individual’s the life course, it is important to track the number of children considered to be poor to identify and target populations at higher risk of poverty-related adverse health outcomes.
State Health Compare provides annual, state-level rates of children considered to be poor based on data from the American Community Survey (ACS) Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) files. Estimates can be broken down by race/ethnicity group (African American/Black, Hispanic/Latino, Other/Multiple Races, and White).
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Related Products
Monitoring Childhood Poverty during and after COVID-19
A study of data on childhood poverty from 2019 showed a rising number of children considered to be poor in the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nearly one in every five children in the U.S. lived in poverty in 2019, and rates of poverty were overall much higher for children who lived in states across the South as opposed to other geographic regions.
Kids’ Health Data Highlight: Children Living in Working Poor Households in 2016 (Infographic)
This infographic highlights national and state-level data on the number of children living in working poor households. The data come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH).