Headline
Black children under age 18 are significantly less likely than other children to live with two married parents, with only 35 percent living with two married parents in 2004. (See Figure 2) The percentage increased from 33 percent in 1995 to 39 percent in 2002 before declining to 35 percent in 2004.
Differences by Race and Ethnicity
Black children are significantly less likely than other children to be living with two married parents. In 2004, 35 percent of black children were living with two parents, compared with 83 percent of Asian children, 77 percent of non-Hispanic white children, and 65 percent of Hispanic children.
In 2004, 9 percent of all black children did not live with either parent, compared with 5 percent of Hispanic children, 3 percent of non-Hispanic white children, and 3 percent of Asian children. (See Figure 2)
Note: Estimates for 2002 and 2004 by race have been revised to reflect the new OMB race definitions, and include only those who are identified with a single race. Hispanics may be of any race.
www.childtrendsdatabank.org/pdf/59_PDF.pdf-------------------------------------------------------------------
Black America's Crisis
Forty years after a controversial report, the question is whether we're any closer to facing the facts about poverty, race and single moms.
August 21, 2005
By Kay S. Hymowitz
Read through the megazillion words on class, income mobility and poverty in the recent New York Times series "Class Matters," and you still won't grasp two of the most basic truths on the subject:
1. Entrenched, multigenerational poverty is largely black; and
2. It is intricately intertwined with the collapse of the nuclear family in the inner city.
By now, these facts shouldn't be hard to grasp. Almost 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers. Those mothers are far more likely than married mothers to be poor, even after a post-welfare-reform decline in child poverty. They are also more likely to pass that poverty on to their children. Single motherhood is a largely low-income and disproportionately black problem.
The truth is that we are now a two-family nation, separate and unequal - one thriving and intact, and the other struggling, broken and far too often African-American.
www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_dmn_black_amer_crisis.htmThe number of single parents continues to increase but at a more moderate rate.
The number of single parents went from 3.8 million in 1970 to 6.9 million in 1980, increasing at an average rate of 6.0 percent per year. By 1990, there were 9.7 million single parents, but the average rate of increase during the 1980's was a more moderate 3.4 percent per year. There were an estimated 11.4 million single parents in 1994, and their number has been increasing by an average of 3.9 percent per year since 1990, a rate not significantly different from that for the 1980's. Thus, single parents continue to increase but at much more moderate rates compared with the 1970's. About 7.3 million or 64 percent of all single parents in 1994 were White, but the incidence of one-parent situations is much higher among Blacks than Whites. Single parents accounted for almost two-thirds (65 percent) of all Black family groups1 with children present (one and two parent situations combined), compared with 25 percent among Whites.
Mothers account for the vast majority of single parents. In 1994, there were about 9.9 million single mothers versus 1.6 million single fathers. Thus, single mothers represented 86 percent of all single parents, which was about the same as their share in 1990 and only slightly lower than their proportion in 1970 and 1980.
Most single parents have either never been married or are currently divorced. In 1994, about 38 percent of single parents were never married, and about an equal share were divorced. These two categories combined accounted for 3 of every 4 single parents. The remainder were either married but not living with their spouse (20 percent) or widowed (5 percent).
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1 Parent-child family groups have at least one never-married own child under 18 years old living in them and include family households, related subfamilies, and unrelated subfamilies.
www.census.gov/population/www/pop-profile/hhfam.html---------------------------------------------------------------------