This morning Minnesota Public Radio aired a report showing childhood poverty is on the rise in Minnesota. According to figures released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation:
The poverty picture in Minnesota has two faces. Government statistics continue to show that Minnesota’s poverty rate is second lowest in the nation behind New Hampshire. However, the numbers also show Minnesota’s child poverty rate has increased by 23 percent from 2000.
In the report, the Childrens’ Defense Fund‘s executive director, Jim Koppel, talks about how poverty today is different poverty a couple generations ago:
Growing up in a lower-income family in Ohio, Koppel says he witnessed family and neighbors with little more than a high school education, sometimes less, moving out of poverty by landing low- and semi-skilled manufacturing jobs that paid something close to a living wage. These days, Koppel says, getting out of poverty is a tall order due in part to the education and training needed to land a job. “We don’t have the gradual slope where you can kind of take baby steps into the next economic level.”
