Working Poor Families with Children, Summary Report [and] Children in Working Poor Families. Final Report to the Foundation for Child Development.

Although it is likely that there will be a substantial number of children who remain poor in spite of considerable work effort by their parents as families leave welfare roles, there has been relatively little research on children in working poor families. The primary purpose of this project is to develop a definition of working poor families and to provide a baseline of descriptive information about them. The primary data sources for the study were the 1987, 1988, and 1990-1993 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation and the Current Population Survey for 1996 and 1997. The findings indicated that children were much less likely to be poor if they were living in a working family. Over time, there was a rough balance between the number of children entering and the number leaving poverty, and children whose parents met the work standard had higher odds of leaving poverty and lower odds of entering poverty. There were racial/ethnic and family structure differences in the percentage of poor children whose families met the work standard. There were substantial differences between working poor families and poor families not meeting the work standard with respect to family structure, education, home ownership, health insurance coverage, car ownership, and child care costs. There were also important differences between working poor families and more prosperous working families in terms of home and car ownership, paid child care participation, and health insurance. (Contains 32 references.) (KB)