THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, June 3, 1996 TAG: 9606030043
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH SIMPSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 81 lines
A job and prosperity don't go hand in hand, a fact highlighted by a study of children growing up in ``working poor'' families.
The study, released today, says 5.4 percent of Virginia's children are growing up in families where at least one parent works 50 or more weeks a year, but whose household income still falls below the national poverty level.
``I have parents all the time saying to me, `I can't afford to work,' '' said Susan Pollack, director of Children's Harbor in Norfolk, a United Way agency that provides day care on a sliding fee scale. ``Once they start working, they start losing welfare benefits. They live paycheck to paycheck, and if the car breaks down, they're in turmoil.''
Virginia's percentage of children in working poor families in 1993 was slightly lower than the country's rate of 7.6 percent. The state with the greatest percentage of children in working poor families in 1993 was Mississippi, with 13 percent of all children; the lowest was Alaska, with 3.6 percent. North Carolina's percentage of children in working poor families - 8.6 percent - was higher than the national rate.
Nationally, children of working poor families made up more than one-third of all of America's poor children, and their numbers grew by 30 percent between 1989 and 1994, according to the study. The poverty threshold for a typical family of three people in 1992 was $11,186.
The study was conducted by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a Baltimore-based organization that studies disadvantaged children and families.
The look at working poor families is part of the foundation's annual, state-by-state ``Kids Count'' study, which attempts to measure the well-being of children in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The study's authors say the findings challenge the popular notion that childhood poverty is largely confined to families on welfare.
William O'Hare, Kids Count coordinator said this ``forgotten poor'' population should be considered in welfare reform discussions, particularly in terms of their need for health insurance and day-care.
The study found that working poor children go without health insurance at a higher rate than any other group of children. In 1994, 27 percent of children of working poor families had no public or private medical insurance, twice the rate for all Americans.
Susan Gholston, who works for the Action Alliance for Virginia's Children and Youth, said the state's percentage of working poor families may actually be higher than what the study's statistics reflect. ``Salaries in Northern Virginia are high and pull up the state's average,'' Gholston said. ``But a family of four living on a $30,000 salary would still not be living well, considering the cost of living there.''
Although the working poor statistics focused only on one year in Virginia - 1993 - the overall Kids Count study also looked at 10 other indicators of children's well-being over an eight-year period.
From 1992 to 1993, the state's rate of child deaths, juvenile arrests for violent crime and high school dropouts increased. The percentage of children living in poverty and the infant mortality rate showed improvements during that period.
A better indication of how the state is doing, however, is to look at the trends since the study was first conducted, according to Gholston.
The eight-year trends - from 1985 to 1993 - shows the state improving in the areas of high school dropouts, infant mortality rates, percentage of children in poverty and child death rates.
Deteriorating areas included teen birth rates, percent of single-parent families and the rate of juvenile violent crime arrests.
The most dramatic trend over those eight years, both nationally and statewide, was the increase in the rate of juvenile violent-crime arrests. In Virginia, there were 243 juvenile arrests for violent crime per 100,000 youths in 1993, up from 150 in 1985. The nation's rate was 506 arrests per 100,000 youths, compared with 305 arrests in 1985.
Frank Kern, project director at Tidewater Detention Center, has only to walk through the crowded Chesapeake facility to vouch for those numbers.
``It's going up and it's going to continue to go up,'' Kern said. ``You have to peel back the layers of the onion to find all the reasons. It's a tough time to grow up, given the changes in family structure, the access to guns, the drug culture.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
Color graphic\Virginian Pilot
Children in working Poor Families
KEYWORDS: POLL SURVEY WORKING POOR CHILDREN POVERTY
JUVENILE CRIME STATISTICS VIRGINIA by CNB