1 in 5 American kids live in poverty, study finds

A national study has found that 1 in 5 American children — or 20 percent — live in poverty and that child poverty increased in 38 states from 2000 to 2009.

The study, by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, concluded that the official child poverty rate increased 18 percent between 2000 and 2009, essentially returning to the same level as the early 1990s.

New Hampshire, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Jersey had the highest overall rankings in the foundation's annual Kids Count survey. Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas and New Mexico ranked lowest.

"In 2009, 42 percent of our nation’s children, or 31 million, lived in families with incomes below twice the federal poverty line or $43,512/year for a family of four, a minimum needed for most families to make ends meet," Laura Speer, associate director for Policy Reform and Data at the Casey Foundation, said in a press release. "The recent recession has wiped out many of the economic gains for children that occurred in the late 1990s."

The research is based on data from numerous sources, including the Mortgage Bankers Association, National Delinquency Survey and U.S. Census Bureau.

According to 10 key measures of "child well-being" tracked by the Foundation, since 2000:

• Five areas have improved: the infant mortality rate, child death rate, teen death rate, teen birth rate, and the percent of teens not in school and not high school graduates.
• Three areas have worsened: the percent of babies born low-birthweight, the child poverty rate, and the percent of children living in single-parent families.
• Two areas are not comparable: changes made to the American Community Survey’s (ACS) 2008 questionnaire regarding employment affected the ability to track trends for the percent of teens not in school and not working, and the percent of children in families where no parent has full-time, year-round employment. Although comparisons cannot be made back to 2000, both indicators worsened between 2008 and 2009.

The AP reports from analyzing the data that:

14.7 million children, 20 percent, were poor in 2009. That represents a 2.5 million increase from 2000, when 17 percent of the nation's youth lived in low-income homes.

(GlobalPost Opinion: America needs a jobs program – now)

The study found that Nevada has the highest rate of children whose parents were unemployed and underemployed, the AP reports.  

The state is also home to the most children affected by foreclosures — 13 percent of all Silver State babies, toddlers and teenagers have been kicked out of their homes because of an unpaid mortgage, the study found.

And across the nation, the recession has had a bigger impact on child well-being at the lower end of the socio-economic scale: 

In the foundation's first examination of the impact of the recession on the nation's children, the researchers concluded that low-income children will likely suffer academically, economically and socially long after their parents have recovered.

The AP quotes Stephen Brown, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, as saying:

"People who grew up in a financially secure situation find it easier to succeed in life, they are more likely to graduate from high school, more likely to graduate from college and these are things that will lead to greater success in life. What we are looking at is a cohort of kids who as they become adults may be less able to contribute to the growth of the economy. It could go on for multiple generations."

Social costs include that "economically disadvantaged children can result in reduced economic output, higher health expenditures and increased criminal justice costs for society."