COLUMBUS – Ohio’s economy may have partially recovered from the recession, but many Ohio children have not.
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There are 53,000 more Ohio children living in poverty and the overall rate is higher than during the recession in 2008, according to 2015 Kids Count data released today by the Annie. E. Casey Foundation.
The state’s child poverty rate rose from to 23 percent last year from 18 percent in 2008, the report showed. Ohio is 31st worst in the nation in child-poverty rate and 23rd overall, about the same as last year, and not far off the nationwide average.
According to the report, 22 percent of American children were living in poverty in 2013 compared with 18 percent in 2008.
“Although we are several years past the end of the recession, millions of families across the country still have not benefited from the economic recovery,” Patrick McCarthy, president and chief executive officer of the Casey Foundation, said in a statement. “While we’ve seen an increase in employment in recent years, many of these jobs are low-wage and cannot support even basic family expenses. Far too many families are still struggling to provide for the day-to-day needs of their children.”
The annual report by the non-profit foundation considers a variety wide of economic, health and education factors in assessing the well-being of children nationally and all 50 states individually.
Children’s advocates in Ohio agree with McCarthy’s assessment that an employment recovery did not mean universal prosperity.
“Many of the jobs that were created in the last few years have obviously helped us reduce the unemployment rate. However, they just have not provided the kind of wages and benefits that families need to be able to lift themselves out of being low-income or poor,” said Dawn Wallace-Pascoe with the Children’s Defense Fund in Ohio.
Minority children have been largely “sidestepped” by Ohio’s economic bounce back, the report said.
Black children are three times as likely to live in poverty areas in Ohio, and twice as likely to be in a single-parent family, while Latino children are most likely be in a household where the parent isn’t a high school graduate.
Nationwide, poverty rates were nearly double among African-Americans and American Indians, and were most severe in the South and Southwest.