The most well-documented effect of childhood poverty is lack of educational achievement, which has a cascade effect on children s life chances. Other serious effects of child poverty include nutritional deprivation and diminished physical health. Also, low income leads to residence in extremely poor neighborhoods characterized by social disorganization and few resources for child development. But part of the answer lies in the large gap between family incomes of children raised in single-parent households and those living in households with two parents in residence. And, not all children in single-parent households are equally at risk for poverty.
Race complicates the picture.
By 1996, more than half of all nonwhite children lived with single parents. Of them, more than 68 percent lived near or at the poverty line, compared to 32 percent of white children living with a single parent living in poverty. The data demonstrate that low wages of many full-time working parents cannot lift children from poverty. Risman suggests that one major policy implication of these data is that, even if welfare reform works as intended to move most single parents into the workforce, their children probably will remain in poverty and still need government assistance to avoid the consequences of growing up poor. In Warren County, earnings at the federal poverty line would provide about 60 percent of self-sufficiency.