The National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) reports that 43 percent of all children in the U.S. now live in low-income families. This includes 30.6 million children, including 5.2 million infants and toddlers under the age of three. What is more concerning is the fact that the number represents an increase between 2009 - 2015.
What is poverty?
The NCCP defines “low-income families” as those earning below twice the federal poverty threshold (FPT), which is currently set at $24,036 for a family of four. What it means to low-income families and their children is that they do not have enough money to afford even the basic necessities of life, including food.
No help from the Trump administration
In spite of the need to help low-income families, President Trump has promised to cut over one million Americans off of SNAP and Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) by early 2017. Without help, here is the scenario we may be looking at over the next several years.
- According to The New York Times, almost half of people in their early 20s require assistance from their parents with rent payments and other necessities. Without help, there is no need to reason that this will change soon.
- Forty percent of young adults between the ages of 22 and 24 require help; in the 1980s, fewer than 30 percent of this age group needed assistance.
- As low-income children reach adulthood, they will face an insecure financial future.
Although Obama continued to state that "things have never been better" during his administration, reading between the lines shows that job growth has mostly occurred in low-paying jobs, which are not paying enough to pay the bills for low-income families. Trump, on the other hand, has created a "Make America Great Again" slogan, but how is this going to happen if low-income families continue to spiral down into the low levels of poverty?
For more details about the National Center For Children in Poverty (NNCP), visit www.nccp.org