The rate of children living in poverty despite government assistance rose again in 2023 to 13.7%, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released Tuesday.
“We have seen it increasing since 2021 due to the expiration of pandemic-era programs,” said Liana Fox, Ph.D., an assistant division chief in the U.S. Census Bureau’s Social, Economic, and Housing Statistics Division.
The data come from the Census Bureau’s annual reports on income, poverty and health insurance, which also show an increase in uninsured children and continuing racial and ethnic disparities.
The child poverty rate taking into account government assistance fell as low as 5.2% in 2021 largely due to programs like the fully refundable child tax credit, expanded earned income tax credit and expanded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. However, those extra benefits have since expired, and the rate rose to 12.4% in 2022 before increasing another 1.3 points in 2023.
These rates, known as supplemental poverty rates, are highest for children who are Black (22%) and Hispanic (20.3%) compared to Asian (14%) and white (7.2%), according to Census data.
Using the official poverty rate not counting government assistance, about 11 million children lived in poverty last year, which is defined as a family with two adults and two children and an annual income below $30,900. Children’s official poverty rate was just slightly above 15%, not statistically different from 2022 but higher than the 10% adult rate.
Across all ages, about 11.1% of people lived in poverty in 2023, down 0.4 points from 2022. The median household income in 2023 was $80,610, a 4% increase from 2022 and the first statistically significant increase since 2019.
The Census Bureau also released new data on health insurance showing about 5.8% of children were not covered at any point in 2023, up about half a percentage point from the year before. Rates of being uninsured for Hispanic children were twice that of other races and ethnicities at 9.4% compared to 4.8% of Black children, 4.4% of white children and 4.2% of Asian children.
The data do not reflect the significant impact of the Medicaid unwinding that began in mid-2023 and resulted in children losing coverage that had been secure during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those children had coverage for part of the year and therefore were not considered uninsured for Census purposes. However, an AAP analysis shows that 5.2 million fewer children were enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program in May 2024 compared to April 2023.
Across all ages, about 8% of people did not have insurance at any point in 2023, which was not statistically different than 2022.
Addressing poverty and lack of insurance are important areas for the Academy. The AAP policy Poverty and Child Health in the United States calls for improving access to early childhood education and increasing parents’ income by strengthening programs like the earned income tax credit, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, housing subsidies and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children.
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