1 in 7 Children Live in Poverty in the U.S.

More than 11 million children were estimated to be living in poverty in 2021, according to U.S. Census Bureau data published by the Children’s Defense Fund. That equates to around one in seven children in the U.S., or 15.3 percent. It’s a high toll, and one even higher than the adult population, which was 10.5 percent for 19-64 year olds that year and 10.3 percent for adults aged 65+. According to an analysis by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, this difference is due to factors such as the “cost of caregiving and its responsibilities, transitions to a single parenthood household, unemployment of parents, and disabilities of family members.”

As this chart shows, poverty levels are disproportionately higher among non-White populations. American Indian/Alaska Native children were particularly overrepresented, with 29.1 percent of this group living in poverty in 2021, followed closely behind by Black children at 27.1 percent, versus a comparatively low 8.8 percent of white children. In terms of absolute numbers, Hispanic children were the biggest group, with 4,168,000 registered as poor in 2021, according to the source, or 37.4 percent of all children who were in poverty.

Other patterns in the data highlighted by the Childrens’ Defense Foundation include the regional divide, with the South showing a child poverty prevalence of nearly 20 percent, or one in five children. This drops to below 15 percent in the Northeast, Midwest and West (closer to one in seven). Perhaps the starkest figure though, is for children living in a single female-headed household, where nearly four in ten (37.1 percent) were living in poverty in 2021.