ABSTRACT
According to the 2012 US Census Bureau report, 16.1 million or 21.6 percent of children under the age of 18 lived in poverty. Children represented 23.7 percent of the total population and 34.6 percent of the people in poverty, and about 1 in 4 of these children were in poverty in 2012. Overall, the child poverty rate has increased from 16.9 percent in 2001 to 21.8 percent in 2012, and currently is higher than the rates for people aged 18 to 64 and those aged 65 and older (DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, & Smith, 2013). The consistent rise in the child poverty rate is crucial because it is likely to have an adverse impact on the cognitive development and social-emotional functioning of poor children (Duncan, Ziol-Guest, & Kalil, 2010; Lichter, 1997).
