Definitions: The share of children living in low-income households where more than 30 percent of the monthly income was spent on rent, mortgage payments, taxes, insurance, and/or related expenses.
Low-income households are households with incomes less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level, as defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. The 30 percent threshold for housing costs is based on research on affordable housing by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban development (HUD). According to HUD, households that must allocate more than 30 percent of their income to housing expenses are less likely to have enough resources for food, clothing, medical care or other needs. Because they must deal with relatively scarce resources to begin with, low-income households are particularly vulnerable.
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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 2011 American Community Survey.
The data for this measure come from the 2000 and 2001 Supplementary Survey and the 2002 through 2011 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 small sub-populations, 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 in low-income households where housing costs exceed 30 percent of income.
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.