Religion & Liberty Online

Low Employment of Adults Affects Children Too

US-child-povertyNot having a job — whether by choice or by circumstance – can adversely affect spiritual and psychological well-being of adults. But living in a home where the parents don’t work can also have a detrimental impact on children.

In a new report, “America’s Work Problem”, Angela Rachidi examines the data related to children in poverty. She finds that while most children in America live with a working adult, those who are in a home without someone working full-time, year-round employment are more likely to be in poverty:

Although work is common in families with children, less than full-time work among the adults in the family still explained the majority (67.2 percent) of children living in official poverty in 2014 (Figure 13). Although full-time work does not necessarily translate into above-poverty income—given that 32.8 percent of children were in poverty even though a full-time worker was in their family—full-time work offers the best path toward higher income, especially when factoring in work-related benefits for families with children, such as the earned income tax credit.

In fact, in 2014, 36.1 percent of children who lived with a working-age adult in poverty according to the official measure were not in poverty when using the supplemental measure.

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Joe Carter

Joe Carter is a Senior Editor at the Acton Institute. Joe also serves as an editor at the The Gospel Coalition, a communications specialist for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and as an adjunct professor of journalism at Patrick Henry College. He is the editor of the NIV Lifehacks Bible and co-author of How to Argue like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator (Crossway).