The Worst of Times: Children in Extreme Poverty in the South and Nation

The Worst of Times: Children in Extreme Poverty in the South and Nation

June 15, 2010- The Southern Education Foundation (SEF) has released a new report which finds that a large, growing number of children in the South and the nation live in extreme poverty—surviving on less than seven or eight dollars per day.
The Worst of Times: Children in Extreme Poverty in the South and Nation analyzes the latest census data for children in extreme poverty and finds that more than 5.7 million children lived in extreme poverty in the United States in 2008 in a household with an income below 50 percent of the federal poverty line—and 2.4 million or 42 percent of those children lived in the South.

The SEF report also finds that:

• The recession has expanded the number of children in extreme poverty by approximately 26 percent — adding almost 1.5 million children in extreme poverty across the nation since 2008.

• School districts with high concentrations of extremely poor children have a disproportionately large enrollment of students of color—primarily African Americans and Hispanics.

• School districts with the largest reported percentages of extremely poor children appear to have the least money to educate these children in the schools.

• Local, state or federal policies in education fail to specifically address the needs of the nation's poorest children.

SEF’s report includes lists of the 100 school districts in the US with the highest rates of extreme child poverty and of the school districts with no extreme poverty among children.

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