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I'm curious about this too. My best guess is that they're measuring household income and there are a lot of kids with low household incomes (more than adults wi

I'm curious about this too. My best guess is that they're measuring household income and there are a lot of kids with low household incomes (more than adults with low household incomes, especially when you have more kids than adults in a household). /shrug

emteycz 6y ago
Poor households tend to have many kids, and the parent/s are often very young, sometimes even under 18. It's not unseen to have 32-year old parents living with their 16-year old daughter and her two babies, a 14-year old child and another ~12-year old child. Of course these are extremely poor compared to even most of low income households. Perhaps that's what was meant by the comment.
hluska 6y ago
With all due respect, there are quite literally hundreds of well written papers that explain this. The number isn’t controversial in the slightest and it’s based on one of the most basic statistical observations in economics. Honestly, I can’t understand why HN is having so much trouble with this. The answer is that in child poverty research, a child is considered to live in poverty if that child lives in a household with an income below the statistical low income cutoff.
- harperlee 6y ago
  That does not answer how the child is poorer than its parents, though. I don’t think people have difficulty with the concept of child poverty, but your original assertion sounds super weird (and yet it sounds official, not a personal opinion, so a paper detailing that would be a better answer).
  - hluska 6y ago
    Try OPM and SPM - they’re both published by the US Census Bureau.
  - fpig 6y ago
    The child is probably not poorer than its parents, but instead, I'm guessing households with children are poorer on average, and even more so the more children they have. This would then mathematically result in children being poorer on average if this is determined by the household they live in. If poor people have more children, then children are going to be poor overall. I agree it's very confusing.
- fpig 6y ago
  So a much less confusing way to say the same thing would be that people in households with children are poorer than people in households without children? Or even simply "poor people have more children than average"?
- jhardy54 6y ago
  With all due respect, that's quite literally exactly what I said: > there are a lot of kids with low household income I think maybe you meant to reply to someone else.

emteycz 6y ago

Poor households tend to have many kids, and the parent/s are often very young, sometimes even under 18. It's not unseen to have 32-year old parents living with their 16-year old daughter and her two babies, a 14-year old child and another ~12-year old child. Of course these are extremely poor compared to even most of low income households. Perhaps that's what was meant by the comment.

hluska 6y ago

With all due respect, there are quite literally hundreds of well written papers that explain this. The number isn’t controversial in the slightest and it’s based on one of the most basic statistical observations in economics. Honestly, I can’t understand why HN is having so much trouble with this. The answer is that in child poverty research, a child is considered to live in poverty if that child lives in a household with an income below the statistical low income cutoff.

harperlee 6y ago
That does not answer how the child is poorer than its parents, though. I don’t think people have difficulty with the concept of child poverty, but your original assertion sounds super weird (and yet it sounds official, not a personal opinion, so a paper detailing that would be a better answer).
- hluska 6y ago
  Try OPM and SPM - they’re both published by the US Census Bureau.
- fpig 6y ago
  The child is probably not poorer than its parents, but instead, I'm guessing households with children are poorer on average, and even more so the more children they have. This would then mathematically result in children being poorer on average if this is determined by the household they live in. If poor people have more children, then children are going to be poor overall. I agree it's very confusing.
fpig 6y ago
So a much less confusing way to say the same thing would be that people in households with children are poorer than people in households without children? Or even simply "poor people have more children than average"?
jhardy54 6y ago
With all due respect, that's quite literally exactly what I said: > there are a lot of kids with low household income I think maybe you meant to reply to someone else.