A new study has determined 42% of Connecticut”™s children are living in households dealing with financial hardship, with a disproportionately high level of Black and Hispanic children impacted by this environment.
According to the new report “ALICE in Focus: Children” from United Way of Western Connecticut and its research partner United For ALICE, 72% of Black children and 67% of Hispanic children live in households that couldn”™t afford the cost of living, compared to 26% of White children. The ALICE acronym stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed ”“ this status is given to households that earn more than the federal poverty level but less than what it costs to live and work in today”™s economy.
According to the new study, 41% of Connecticut families below the ALICE threshold reported their children “sometimes or often” didn”™t have enough to eat during the fall of 2021, in contrast with 17% of higher income families. Because ALICE households often earn too much to qualify for public assistance, the report noted that 192,000 at-risk children could not access the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that assisted those below the poverty level.
“No child should grow up without access to the resources and opportunity to meet their potential,” said Isabel Almeida, president of United Way of Western Connecticut. “Too often, we only count children that fall below the federal poverty line when, in reality, we need to look at the ALICE threshold to provide a more holistic picture of who in our state lives paycheck to paycheck. Our failure to look more broadly means that children are locked out of receiving critical supports for stable housing, food, and quality education, which can have devastating long-term impacts.”
Photo: Alf-Marty / Pixabay
