Poverty and Income in 2005: A Look at the New Census Data and What the Numbers Mean for Children and Families

Transcript

RON HASKINS: I think some of the panelists may look at this a little bit, if you look at the overall poverty for children, it actually went down a little bit, even though it is not significant. If you look at several of the measures, and there are a number of measures in the report and some that are in the tables but not mentioned in the report, poverty among children of female-headed families looks a little worse. In most cases it actually goes up a little bit, though it is not significant.

So the picture is a little bit different for female-headed families, and my own opinion is this is extremely important because this is a group that we are especially interested in because most of America's poor children live in female-headed families, and if you want to make progress against poverty you have to make progress in female-headed families. That is exactly where we were making such remarkable progress in the last half of the 1990s, and now again that progress apparently we have not recovered lost ground after the recession of 2001. And even though it is not getting worse and it might be inching up a little bit, it is not getting significantly better. So I would say that this is still an important issue.

Then finally, this is a percent of people and children with government health insurance, and I think this continues the picture from previous years. Even though more people are covered, the percentages go down, and especially they go down for private coverage, and they go up a little bit for government coverage, and the net increase is an increase in the number of people, but a decline in the percentage who are covered by health insurance. So we have a continuing problem with health insurance, and these data at least hint, and I will be glad to hear what the panelists have to say about this, it continues a trend that began in something like 1990 of in almost every year there is a decline in coverage of health insurance by the private sector.

I have heard important health economists say that they think the private sector can as much as it can get out of the business of health insurance, and kids are a wonderful example. We have had good coverage with kids with big increases in the late-1990s and even following the recession, big increases in Medicaid coverage, and this makes the point that if you want to have coverage of health insurance for people, the government probably has to play an increasingly important role, but those of you interested in the budget deficit, you do not like that, so this is a real problem for American public policy, and the problem basically continues.

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