It was revealed in a recent report that almost one in four children living in Washington, D.C. are in poverty, which is above the national average.
The report issued by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a Baltimore-based organization dedicated to the well-being of American children, stated that 32,000 kids in the District live below the federal poverty line.
The figure is considered one of the highest rates in child poverty across the U.S. states.
The children living in poverty comprise almost 26 percent of those under the age of 18 in D.C., while the national rate was 18 percent in 2017.
It was noted that the child poverty rate in D.C. decreased four percent since 2010, however, it is the same percentage today as it was in 1990.
According to the report, kids of color were the majority of the child population in D.C., as well as in 14 states and Puerto Rico. (It is also predicted that children of color will represent the majority of all U.S. kids by 2020.)
As for children in immigrant families, D.C. has seen the percentage doubling from 1990 through 2017, along with 38 states, while it at least tripled in 20 states and at least quadrupled in 12 others.
The child population in D.C. was 112,632 in 1990, which rose to 124,492 in 2017 with an increase of 11 percent.
“Although they are not ranked against states, children in the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico experienced some of the worst outcomes on many of the indicators the Foundation tracks,” the report said.
Children in families without secure parental employment in the District was 42 percent in 2017, which was above West Virginia (37 percent), the state with the highest rate.
Another finding of the report is that the percentage of children without health coverage in D.C. was one percent in 2017, which was the lowest, along with Massachusetts. The figure was 11 percent in Texas.
The District also had the best rate (25 percent) for the share of 3- and 4-year-olds not in school in 2015-17; while among states, Connecticut had the lowest rate (35 percent) and North Dakota had the highest percentage (69 percent).