Children Browse Topics Marriage, Family Pop. Projections Education Race, Ethnicity Income, Poverty Migration Foreign-Born Pop. In 1998, 34.5 million people in the United States were living below the poverty line. Of the total number of people in poverty, 13.5 million were children , 17.6 million were working-age adults , and 3.4 million were ages 65 and older. Children, on the other hand, are worse off today than they were 30 years ago, despite a decline in child poverty over the past five years.
Some children are at greater risk of living in poverty than others.
As shown in the adjacent figure, children ages 6 to 17 were at a slightly lower risk of living in poverty.