Poverty Up 52% Among Children, New Study Finds

The number of American children living in poverty totaled 13.8 million in 1983, soaring 52% in the last decade and reaching the highest level since the mid-1960s, a congressional study showed Wednesday.

Moreover, the huge increase occurred at the same time that federal spending on poor children declined, said the comprehensive 670-page report, released at a House subcommittee hearing. And, it concluded, “the poverty rate among children is not apt to drop very sharply” even if economic growth continues.

The study should “shock the conscience of this nation,” said Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), one of the members of the House Ways and Means Committee who commissioned the nine-month report.

The number of children in poverty in 1983--the latest year for which figures were available--was the highest since 1965, before President Lyndon B. Johnson launched his War on Poverty and dramatically increased federal spending on the poor. By 1969, the child poverty rate had been cut in half from what it had been a decade earlier.

But since then, the report said, the number of poor children has increased steadily and rose “especially sharply”--a total of 35%--from 1979 to 1983, a period in which President Reagan initiated deep cuts in social spending.

One in Five Poor

By 1983, more than one child in five was living in poverty, according to the report, conducted by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service and the Congressional Budget Office.

“I just wonder what happened to that ‘safety net,’ ” said Rep. Harold E. Ford (D-Tenn.), chairman of the Ways and Means subcommittee on public assistance, referring to Reagan’s stated intention to protect the “truly needy.”

For statistical purposes, each member of a family is judged to be poor if a family’s pre-tax cash income is less than three times the cost of a nutritionally adequate but minimum diet. In 1983, the poverty threshold for a family of three was roughly $8,000.

Poor children, constituting nearly 40% of all those in poverty, far outnumber the aged poor, who have received steady increases in Social Security income. Reflecting the rise in Social Security benefits, overall spending for the network of anti-poverty programs--a figure often cited by the Reagan Administration to illustrate its commitment to the “safety net”--climbed 83% from 1973 to 1983.

But total spending to families of poor children declined about 6% over the same period--reducing cash benefits to each poor child by 22%--while the population of poor children grew by about 30%, the report concluded.

Blacks, Hispanics Affected

In examining the poor, the study found that black children and those born to unwed mothers were by far the most likely to be poor.

“Almost half of all black children and more than one-third of all Hispanic children were poor,” the study said. “In contrast, nearly five-sixths of all white children were not poor. . . . A black child was almost three times as likely to be poor as a white child.”

Noting the “feminization” of poverty, the study said that almost one-fifth of the births in 1983 were to unwed mothers and that three of every four such children were poor. However, it also described a small “de-feminization” trend, showing that the poverty rate climbed faster among two-parent families than in single-parent families from 1978 to 1983.

Legislation was introduced Wednesday in both the Senate and the House that would strengthen “minimal levels of funding” for poverty programs cut in recent years. Sponsored by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), Ford and Rangel, the measures would cost an estimated $10 billion to implement.