One out of 10 Rhode Island children — or more than 20,000 kids– lives in “extreme
poverty,” with a family income of less than $8,525 a year, according to a report
released last week by Rhode Island’s leading children’s policy group.
The seventh annual Rhode Island Kids Count survey shows that 18 percent of the state’s under-18 population, or 40,231 children, live in families with incomes below the $17,050 federal poverty line. While that percentage of poor children is basically unchanged from recent years, the number of kids living below the extreme poverty line could force policymakers to rethink their approach to combating child poverty.
“With half of these kids living at extreme poverty levels, it makes a huge difference in terms of the help we need to give them,” Rhode Island Kids Count Executive Director Elizabeth Burke Bryant said. “There is an even more dire need for things like affordable housing and food stamps when we are dealing with that level of poverty.” Child poverty in Rhode Island is concentrated among minorities, who are more than twice as likely to live in poverty than white children, the study shows. Poverty rates are highest in the state’s “core” cities: Providence, Woonsocket, Newport, Central Falls and Pawtucket.
The state has seen the population of its minority children swell over the past decade, according to recently released information from the 2000 census. Twenty-eight percent of Rhode Island kids are minorities, according to the 2000 census – up from 14 percent in 1990. Much of that increase was driven by a surge in the number of young Hispanics, which more than doubled during the 1990s to reach 35,000.
The 2001 Kids Count report shows that Rhode Island children are getting better access to health care. Infant-mortality rates are dropping, fewer kids are uninsured and children have access to mental-health services for problems such as attention deficit disorder and depression.
Health care accessibility for mothers in Rhode Island is improving too: More than 90 percent of the state’s mothers receive pre-natal care during the first trimester of pregnancy, which is the highest percentage in the United States. Moreover, teenage pregnancies have dropped off slightly in recent years and women dependent on Medicaid are waiting longer in between pregnancies.
Burke-Bryant said the advances in health-care accessibility reflect the state’s stronger commitment to funding health care programs such as RIte Care, which provides health insurance plans to low-income families.
“No one can deny that providing adequate health care is an expensive proposition.” Burke Bryant said, “But when you invest in things like access to pre-natal care and mental-health services for children, it saves money in the long-run.”
One glaring health problem cited in the report, however, was the number of lead poisoning cases in Rhode Island. Although cases have declined in recent years, some areas still have an alarmingly high incidence of young children with elevated lead levels in their blood. In Providence and Central Falls, roughly one in four kids entering kindergarten show signs of lead poisoning.
The Kids Count report — unveiled last week during a meeting of government officials
and community leaders at the Providence Marriott — links the problems of child
poverty, juvenile crime and poor health to weak educational performance. Central
Falls, for example, has the second-highest child poverty rate (35 percent) of
Rhode Island’s 39 communities and the lowest percentage of adults with high school
degrees (47 percent).
Dr. Rosa Smith, superintendent of schools in Columbus, Ohio and guest speaker at the Kids Count event, encouraged audience members to think of child education less as a public-policy charge and more as a matter of life and death. “If you believe you are in the business of saving lives vs. simply teaching or providing health care or foodit determines the way you think about your work, the way you talk about your work and the way you do your work.”
