Data released last week from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey show that Colorado’s child poverty rate fell to 12 percent in 2017, down from 13 percent in 2016 and the lowest level in more than a decade. Approximately 149,000 Colorado children experienced poverty in 2017, down from a high of 224,000 children in 2012 when our state’s child poverty rate peaked in the midst of a slow economic recovery. The child poverty rate fell nationally as well, dropping to 18.4 percent in 2017 from 19.5 percent in 2016.
Asian children and African-American children in Colorado saw the largest declines in child poverty rates between 2016 and 2017, and poverty rates declined for Hispanic children as well. Despite these declines, children of color in Colorado and across the U.S. continue to be more likely to experience poverty than their white peers due to historical and current-day policies and practices that have created barriers to economic opportunity for people of color. Click to keep reading at Colorado Children’s Campaign.
-Sarah Hughes
Author: Mile High Mamas
