A report from the U.S. Census bureau shows that child poverty in most of Connecticut’s big cities has risen in the last six years.
Bridgeport, Hartford, Stamford and Waterbury all saw increases in child poverty rates, but the figures released Monday showed that New Haven was the only Connecticut city that saw a decrease.
Waterbury now ranks among the nation’s top 50 cities with the greatest percentage of children living in poverty.
The figures do show that Hartford no longer has the distinction of having the second-highest child poverty rate among the nation’s larger cities. It’s dropped from second to sixth place. The city had 43.4 percent of its children living poverty in 2006, up from 41.3 percent in 2000.
However, child advocates in the state say the reason Hartford’s ranking improved is because Springfield, Mass., Detroit and Jackson, Tenn., increased their rates of child poverty faster.
“Hartford didn’t do better. It’s just that other states had gotten worse,” Shelley Geballe, president of Connecticut Voices for Children, said.
Waterbury’s child poverty rate increased to 33.5 percent in 2006 from 23.9 percent in 2000. Bridgeport’s rate rose to 29.5 percent, from 25.1 percent. Stamford rose to 9.2 percent, from 8.9 percent.
New Haven’s poverty rate decreased, going to 27.6 percent in 2006, down from 32.6 percent in 2000.
Geballe said the increase in child poverty rates in the cities is due to the fact that the state’s low-wage workers have not shared in the state’s economic growth.
Connecticut Voices is urging state lawmakers to implement a state earned-income tax credit, increase job training for low-wage families and invest in high education to combat child poverty.
The census bureau’s data on poverty rates were collected by the American Community Survey, a large-scale sampling of households distinct from the census population.
