More US kids living in high-poverty areas_美文

More US kids living in high-poverty areas

"Their families have a harder time providing for basic necessities like good housing, being able to access health insurance and good quality health care," Speer said. "Kids who attend schools that are in low-income communities ... tend to struggle in school in lots of different ways."

The foundation, which focuses on children and family issues, gathered the data looking at US Census data from 2010, the latest year available.

The study defined high-poverty communities as those where 30 percent or more are in poverty, defined by the federal government in 2010 as annual income of less than $22,314 for a family of four.

Still, while many experts say the effects on children and families who are poor is clear, the impact of poor neighborhoods is still an area of debate.

"I think the geographic dimension is less understood or well known," said Harvard's Sampson, author of Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect, a book based on 10 years of research.

The recession has exacerbated children's exposure to poverty, and his research shows it can set back their learning the equivalent of a year, he said. That can be difficult to change, Sampson said, and policies need to target both individuals and communities.

"Neighborhoods get locked into the poverty," he said.

Greg Duncan, an education professor at the University of California, Irvine, said when it comes to "the double whammy of both family poverty and neighborhood poverty," the data is far less clear on the impact of where people live.