Children in Chronic Poverty, Census Says

Children make up nearly half of Americans living in chronic poverty, the Census Bureau says. About 48% of the chronically poor were children in 1992 and 1993, and 8% of the nation’s children were stuck in poverty during the same period, the bureau reported. About 5%, or 12 million, of Americans were classified as chronically poor in all of 1992 and 1993, the report said. That was slightly less than the 5.1%, or 12.5 million, who were poor for all of 1991 and 1992. The average poverty threshold for a family of four in 1993 was $14,763.