Almost 1 in 4 American Children in Poverty

Saki Knafo, writing for the Huffington Post, focuses on UNICEF’s recent report on child poverty in developed countries.  The report displays the shockingly high child poverty rate in the U.S., along with many other first world nations.  America’s child poverty rate stands at 23.1%, second only to Romania with 25.5%.  The rate was also marked at above 15% in Italy, Spain, Greece, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, and Japan.  The report does acknowledge that the term “relative child poverty,” which refers to a child living in a household that possesses a disposable income of less than half the national median income, does have its weaknesses.  The term is less effective when comparing rates between countries, but when taking each country into account separately, the relative child poverty is quite accurate.  Additionally, UNICEF calculates how social welfare programs affect the rate.  While Canada and the U.S. have the exact same child poverty rate before taxes and transfers (25.1%), when taking into account benefits from social welfare programs and taxes, the poverty rate in Canada drops drastically to 13.1%, whereas the rate in the U.S. falls only to 23.1%.