2 Of 5 NJ Kids Live In Financially Struggling Households: Report

NEW JERSEY — Black and Hispanic children in New Jersey were more than twice as likely as white kids to live under financial hardship right before the pandemic, according to new research. A New Jersey nonprofit's report contends that the federal government's poverty standards severely undercount the overall number of children in homes that struggle to make ends meet.

In New Jersey, 63 percent of Black children and 60 percent of Hispanic youth lived in households that couldn't afford the basics — compared to 27 percent of white children, according to United Way of Northern New Jersey's report. The nonprofit measures financial struggle not just through the federal poverty line but through its own ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) metric. ALICE households live paycheck to paycheck and can't afford the basics for survival, according to the organization.

Federal standards deemed that 12 percent of New Jersey children lived in poverty in 2019. But an additional 29 percent lived in ALICE households that earned more than the federal poverty level, according to United Way of Northern New Jersey. That's about 787,000 children in total — before the pandemic exacerbated financial issues for many families.

“Undercounting the number of children who are at risk can have lifelong consequences,” Kiran Handa Gaudioso, CEO of United Way of Northern New Jersey. “Thousands of children are locked out of receiving critical supports for stable housing, food and quality education, all of which can inhibit healthy child development.”

While the federal poverty line for a family of four was $25,750 in 2019, the bare-minimum cost of living for a New Jersey family — based on the ALICE Household Survival Budget — was $88,000, according to United Way of Northern New Jersey.

Living under the ALICE threshold can have major consequences. For instance, half of New Jersey families below the ALICE threshold reported last fall that their children "sometimes or often" didn't have enough to eat, in contrast with 32 percent of higher-income households, the report says.

But because ALICE households often earn too much to qualify for public assistance, the report found that more than 546,000 at-risk children in New Jersey didn’t access the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The Garden State lags behind its neighbors, with 31 percent of at-risk children enrolled in SNAP, compared with 36 percent in New York, 37 percent in Connecticut and 47 percent in Pennsylvania, the report says.

Other findings from United Way of Northern New Jersey included the following:

• Having two working parents doesn't guarantee financial stability. Twenty-two percent of New Jersey children living in a home with two adults in the labor force were still below the ALICE Threshold in 2019.
• Among households below the ALICE Threshold, families of Black children had the lowest homeownership rate at 20 percent, compared to 56 percent of families of white children.
• Nearly 196,000 children in households earning below the ALICE Threshold had no high-speed internet access at home.

"Having accurate, complete data is the foundation for designing equitable solutions," said Dr. Stephanie Hoopes, national director of United For ALICE. "COVID-19 hit ALICE families so much harder than others because they struggle to build savings yet often don't qualify for financial assistance."

Find the full report and data here.