Portrait of Inequality: Black Children in America

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Portrait of Inequality 2011

Black Children in America

July 2011 The economic crisis of the last three years has pushed Black children and youth deeper and deeper into an abyss of poverty, hunger, homelessness and despair. Black children and youth continue to face multiple risks from birth and throughout life that increase the danger of their becoming part of the Cradle to Prison Pipeline® crisis that leads to dead end lives.

Poverty

Poverty destroys childhood and can destroy children. In 2009, 15.5 million children – more than one in five – were poor.1 Children experienced the steepest single year rise in poverty since 1959. • • • • Black children are three times as likely to be poor (35%) as White children (12%).2 Black children are more than three times as likely as White children to live in extreme poverty3: half of the poverty level or less ($11,025 for a family of four). The four million Black children (more than one in three) living in poverty in 2009 represented an increase of over 150,000 since 2008 and...