Number of Children Living in Poverty Continues to Rise : Family: Research shows crisis is “largely out of control,” says author of survey. From ‘72-’93 ranks almost doubled despite ‘80s economic growth.

If present trends continue, half of all African-American and Latino children in the United States, and nearly a quarter of Anglo children, will live in poverty by the year 2010, a report issued here this week concludes.

The poverty growth rate for white children will be the fastest of all--37%--between 1993 and 2010, according to the six-month study conducted by the Center on Hunger, Poverty and Nutrition Policy at Boston’s Tufts University.

“American children are being divided into two separate countries,” said Dr. J. Larry Brown, director of the Center on Hunger, Poverty and Nutrition Policy and one of two authors of the survey, “Two Americas: Racial Differences in Child Poverty in the U.S.”

“In one there are youngsters in households with resources which, though shrinking, are enough to keep them and their families out of poverty,” Brown said. “But for children in the other America, the day-to-day reality is poverty, with all the desperation that accompanies it.”

The Tufts researchers based their analysis on data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, which showed that the number of Americans living below the federal poverty level in 1992 had risen to a three-decade high of 36.9 million.

Tufts investigators looked at child poverty rates for white, Hispanic and black Americans under 18 years old, projecting the Census Bureau’s own data into the next century. In addition, the Tufts group examined Census Bureau trends in child poverty over three decades, from 1959 to 1992.

The Tufts report adhered to the Census Bureau’s description of a 1992 poverty threshold of an annual income of $14,335 or less for a family of four.

The assessment follows a recent study by UNICEF, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, which found that child poverty in the United States was more than double that in other major industrial nations.

Viewed as a whole, the latest research paints a sobering portrait of a child poverty crisis that is “largely out of control” in this country, Brown said.

Clifford Johnson, director of programs and policies at the Children’s Defense Fund in Washington, said that with the new raft of information about child poverty, “warning bells should be going off in this country.”

The Tufts report also found that:

* Child poverty has not always been so severe. During the decade of the 1960s, the number of poor American children actually decreased by 44.8%.

* From 1973 to 1992, the number of American children living in poverty increased by 46.8%, despite a period of sustained economic growth in this country during the 1980s.

* From 1973 to 1992, the number of white children in poverty increased by 52.6%.

* The number of Latino children living in poverty increased by 116% during the same period.

* For African-American children, the poverty growth rate between 1973 and 1992 was 26.9%.

While stressing that she had not yet seen the Tufts report, Dr. Kristin A. Moore, director of Child Trends, an independent research organization in Washington, said the conclusions showed that “we must be very much aware that this is not just an issue for minority children or for children from single-parent homes.”

Johnson, at the Children’s Defense Fund, described the current data as “a huge signal to the country that we need to be doing something different.”

He added that “we as a society are paying an enormous price for tolerating” child poverty.

On Capitol Hill, Rep. Tim Roemer, D-Ind., termed the most recent study “a shocking reminder to us that hungry children do not only live in Africa or Appalachia. We have hungry children who need help in our own communities.”

Roemer, a member of the House Committee on Education and Labor, is the founder of the Children’s Working Group, a congressional body that focuses on children’s issues.

Dr. John Cook, co-author of the Tufts study, called his group’s findings “a strong indication that we have somehow misplaced our priorities.”

In other countries, Cook said, “there is a recognition that children are the key to the future.

“We seem to have forgotten that security for us in our old age is directly dependent on the security of our children,” he continued. “We are absolutely failing to prepare for our own future by letting so many children continue to fall into poverty.”