Children of Incarcerated Parents

Interestingly, the United States is one of the only nations that uses an absolute measure
to determine poverty rates. In Europe and elsewhere best practices indicate that a
relative measure of poverty is the best indicator of both proportional deprivation and
comparable quality of life. Using a relative measure of poverty is considered a more
accurate way of determining the economic stability of a group relative to both the
general population and other comparable subpopulations. Using a relative measure to
determine juvenile poverty rates requires setting a cutoff point – 60%, 50%, or 40% are
standard measures – of average income, at which point a child or family is classified as
poor. Relative measures of child poverty show that an even higher percentage of
children in the US are impoverished, deepening the juvenilization of poverty.
The NCCP also writes that "Research shows, on average, families need an income of
about twice that level to cover basic expenses. Using this standard, 42% of children live
in low-income families".
According to the most recent statistics from the National Center for Children in Poverty
(NCCP) at Columbia University, about 51 million children, or 21% of the juvenile
population of the United States, live "in families with incomes below the federal poverty
level – $22,050 a year for a family of four".
Using these calculations, the number of children currently living in poverty in the United
States is between 1:5 and 2:5 children. A recent analysis of the 2010 US Census found
that the number of poor children rose by 1 million in 2010, with nearly 1:5 American
children now living in poverty. Either statistic, say advocates of child welfare, is far too
high. They point to histories of the past 50 years and especially the past 20 years and
make the claim that even in good economic eras and especially in bad ones, the effects
of poverty have been disproportionally transferred to children.
Controversies
However, there is also a body of scholarship in response that questions the validity of
these terms, finding that there has been neither an increase in women/child poverty nor
a systematic project to transfer poverty to these populations. In particular, conservative
researchers have argued that mismeasurement, inaccurate calculations, and inherent
flaws in poverty data collection have overstated both child poverty rates and the
juvenilization of poverty. Susan Mayer and Christopher Jencks write:
After a century of fairly steady decline, the official poverty rate among American children
increased from 14.0 percent in 1969 to 19.6 percent in 1989, suggesting that the United
States was losing its war on poverty. But once we correct various defects in the official
poverty measure, our best estimate is that the proportion of children in households with
incomes below the poverty line probably fell between 1969 and 1989 or between 1967
and 1991.
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