Immigration Accounts for Almost 1/2 of Increases in Child Poverty
Writing at The Corner, Mark Krikorian explains the connection between mass immigration and child poverty:
A few days ago, Reihan questioned whether David Frum was correct that one of the reasons we have a higher rate of child poverty than other developed countries is immigration. As Reihan wrote, "I personally think our immigration policy should change. But I don't think child poverty rates are the reason."
As I point out in my book, all the reasons are really just different facets of the one reason: Mass immigration is incompatible with a modern society. So my assumption was that David was right, but since I couldn't expect Reihan just to take my word for it, my colleague Steven Camarota ran some numbers from the latest data. And, in fact, the results show pretty clearly that immigration plays a significant role in child poverty. Data gathered by the Census Bureau in 2009 (about income earned in the prior calendar year) show that in 2008, a total of 14.1 million children (under age 18) lived below the official federal poverty threshold. Of this 14.1 million, 4.4 million (31 percent) were either immigrants themselves or U.S.-born with at least one immigrant parent. The poverty rate for the children of immigrants is 26 percent, compared to 17 percent for the children of native-born parents.
The same data show that another 1.6 million Hispanic children with U.S.-born parents also live in poverty; most of these kids are the grandchildren of post-1960 immigrants. Looked at this way, the children and grandchildren of the current wave of immigration account for perhaps 43 percent of all children in poverty, compared to 32 percent of the nation's total child population.
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