Multiracial Children and Poverty: Evidence From the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study of Kindergartners

Despite the recent growth in multiracial children among American children, we know very little about their well-being. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class (N = 17,706), we evaluated the likelihood of living in poverty and near poverty for multiracial and monoracial children. Most multiracial groups have poverty or near poverty rates that are in between Whites and their respective minority monoracial counterparts, with Asian-Whites reporting a risk of poverty equivalent to Whites and Black-Hispanics reporting risks as high as Black and Hispanic children. Family structure and educational and occupational attainment characteristics explain some or all of the White/non-White differentials in poverty for multiracial groups, even as monoracial children still exhibit higher risk than Whites. We consider these patterns' implications for practitioners working with low-income families.Key Words: child poverty, family, multiracial, race.American families are more ethnically and racially diverse than ever before, raising new questions on how to assess and understand child well-being (Burton, Bonila-Silva, Ray, Buckelew, & Freeman, 2010). One aspect of this diversity is the growing number of interracial marriages and couples and, consequently, a growing number of mixed-race children. Following the Supreme Court's repeal of antimi scegenation laws in 1967, the number of births to interracial couples grew from 1.4% of all births in the early 1970s to 4.3% in 1998 (Atkinson, Macdorman, & Parker, 2001; Parker & Madans, 2002). Interracial marriages now account for one in seven new marriages (Passe!, Wang, & Taylor, 2010) and, according to U.S. Census population estimates, more than 1.2 million children are identified with two or more races as of July 2010, double the estimate of approximately 600,000 children in 2000 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011). Despite the growth of this group, they are rarely included in efforts to track the circumstances and differentials in circumstances of American children. Although prior research reveals that minority children are at greater risk of poverty than their White peers, the poverty status of this expanding segment of American children is much less clear.The absence of poverty information on the multiracial child population represents a serious shortcoming on two fronts. First, experiencing economic insecurity at an early age has the most influence on outcomes later in life (BrooksGunn & Duncan, 1997), thus providing the basis for our understanding of the differences in everything from educational achievement and attainment to health outcomes (Aber, Bennett, Conley, & Li, 1997; Duncan, BrooksGunn, & Klebanov, 1994; Korenman, Miller, & Sjaastad, 1995). Second, child poverty, like many indicators of social well-being, is strongly stratified by race. African Americans, American Indians, and Hispanic children continue to have substantially higher rates of poverty and near poverty than their White counterparts (Lichter, Qian & Crowley, 2005; Lu, Palmer, Song, Lennon, & Aber, 2004). Although these patterns reflect, in part, a growing share of children of color growing up in single-mother households (McLanahan & Percheski, 2008) and racial disparities in employment and education (Iceland, 2003; Lichter et al., 2005), adjusting for these issues does not close the racial gap in poverty. Although the racial divide in child poverty is a salient marker of racial inequality in American society (Lin & Harris, 2008), we have less information on whether such inequality extends to those who bridge racial communities within the same family. In other words, would a child whose background includes both Hispanic and White parentage have a child poverty profile that is more similar to other Hispanics or Whites, or might this child's circumstances stand apart entirely?How Extensive Is Poverty Among Multiracial and Monoracial Children? …