Child Trends, a Washington nonprofit, has published an analysis of child and parent poverty in the United States based on 2010 census data released recently. Although the recession and factors such as the age of parents or their children have a bearing on poverty, the outstanding indicator is family structure. Here are their top 10 facts:

Top Ten Facts

Two Generations in Poverty, 2000-2010

Fact: Women are more likely to be poor or low income than men.

Fact: Single-parent families (at 37.2%) are about four times as likely as married-couple families (at 8.8%) to be in poverty.

Fact: More than one in 10 children is living in deep poverty, more than one in five is living in poverty, and more than two in five are low income.

Fact: Families headed by Black and Hispanic householders are more likely to be living in poverty or to be low-income, compared with those headed by White and Asian householders.

Fact: Adults living in poverty are more likely to have lower levels of education compared with adults living above the poverty line.

Fact: Children growing up in single-mother households (at 46.9%) experience higher rates of poverty than those growing up in married couple households (at 11.6%).

Fact: Family households with young children under age 6 are more likely to be living in poverty or to be low-income compared to those with children under age 18.

Fact: Young adults ages 18-24 experience the highest rates of poverty among adults as compared to adults ages 18-64, and ages 65 years and older.

Fact: Families headed by young householders ages 18-24 are more likely to be poor or low income than families headed by householders ages 25 to 54.

Fact: Families headed by a single parent are more likely to be poor than families headed by married couples, even when at least one family member in the household is working full-time and year-round.
For an at-a-glance presentation of the salient facts, go to the graphs at the end of the document, Two Generations in Poverty: Status and Trends among Parents and Children in the United States, 2000-2010, at http://www.childtrends.org/