April 21, 2015
The Community Foundation of New Jersey was proud to join Advocates for Children of New Jersey (ACNJ) in Trenton yesterday for the release of their annual Kids Count Report.
This year’s report revealed interesting (and concerning) findings regarding racial disparities in the health, well-being, and services available to young people.
From the Star-Ledger:
There were 2 million children in New Jersey in 2013: 49 percent white, 24 percent Latino, 15 percent black, nine percent Asian, and eight percent identified as another race or of more than one race, according to the report.
But one-third of black children and 29 percent of Latino children and 20 percent of children of mixed race lived below the poverty line in 2013, compared to eight percent of white children and six percent of Asian children. The federal poverty line was $23,050 for a family of four in 2012.
“In short, black and Hispanic children are much more likely to live in families that struggle to pay the rent, put food on the table and provide for their children’s basic necessities. This pervasive poverty adversely affects nearly every aspect of child well-being,” according to the report.
Click here for the full article.
Ceil Zalkind, ACNJ’s Executive Director, gave the Community Foundation and its fundholders a sneak peak of the report’s finding when she spoke at Tracy House earlier this month. For more on that event, click here.
To read more from the report – or to see how your county stacks up – click here.