Definitions: The share of all children under age 18 living in families where no parent has regular, full-time employment.
For children living in single-parent families, this means the resident parent did not work at least 35 hours per week, at least 50 weeks in the 12 months prior to the survey. For children living in married-couple families, this means neither parent worked at least 35 hours per week, at least 50 weeks in the 12 months prior to the survey. Children living with neither parent were listed as not having secure parental employment because those children are likely to be economically vulnerable. Children under age 18 who are householders, spouses of householders, or unmarried partners of householders were excluded from this analysis. This measure is very similar to the measure called "Secure Parental Employment," used by the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics in its publication America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being.
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Data Source: Population Reference Bureau, analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000 Supplementary Survey, 2001 Supplementary Survey, 2002 through 2007 American Community Survey.
The data for this measure come from the 2000 and 2001 Supplementary Survey and the 2002 through 2007 American Community Survey (ACS). The 2000 through 2004 ACS surveyed approximately 700,000 households monthly during each calendar year. In general but particularly for these years, use caution when interpreting estimates for less populous states or indicators representing a small sub-population, where the sample size is relatively small. Beginning in January 2005, the U.S. Census Bureau expanded the ACS sample to 3 million households (full implementation), and in January 2006 the ACS included group quarters. The ACS, fully implemented, is designed to provide annually updated social, economic, and housing data for states and communities. (Such local-area data have traditionally been collected once every ten years in the long form of the decennial census.)
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Footnotes:
S - Estimates suppressed when the confidence interval around the
percentage is greater than or equal to 10 percentage points. N.A. – Data
not available.
Data are provided for the 50 most populous cities according to the most
recent Census counts. Cities for which data is collected may change
over time.
A 90 percent confidence interval for each estimate can be found at
Children living in families where no parent has full-time, year-round employment.
Note: The District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are
not included in maps and rankings because they are not states and therefore comparisons on many
indicators of child well being are not meaningful.