Following last week’s release of national poverty numbers, the Census Bureau released state specific numbers this week. Besides a drop in the uninsured, it doesn’t look good. Our colleagues at Marketplace wrote a comprehensive article about poverty rates across the country. The number that we’re most interested in, though, is the increase in children living in poverty.
Over the past ten years Michigan has had the third-largest increase in childhood poverty. In 2001, Michigan had a child poverty rate of 14.2 percent. That number rose to 24.4 percent last year. That’s a ten percent increase over 10 years.
Job loss alone can’t explain the increase in Michigan’s poverty rates. Last year one in 10 working families in the state were living in poverty, the highest percentage in the Midwest.
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