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Change Indicator

Children whose parents lack secure employment by race and ethnicity in United States

Children whose parents lack secure employment by race and ethnicity

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Note: Non-consecutive years appear adjacent in the trend line
because one or more years have been deselected.

Definition and Source

PROVIDER

Definition

The share of all children under age 18 living in families where no parent has regular, full-time employment.

For children living in single-parent families, this means the resident parent did not work at least 35 hours per week, at least 50 weeks in the 12 months prior to the survey. For children living in married-couple families, this means neither parent worked at least 35 hours per week, at least 50 weeks in the 12 months prior to the survey. Children living with neither parent were listed as not having secure parental employment because those children are likely to be economically vulnerable. This measure is very similar to the measure called "Secure Parental Employment," used by the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics in its publication America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being.

Data Source

Population Reference Bureau, analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau 2005 through 2007 American Community Survey.

The data for this measure come from the 2005 through 2007 American Community Survey (ACS).  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.) Race/ethnic groups represented in this table are not mutually exclusive. The category of white includes only non-Hispanic white. The categories Black or African American, American Indian, and Asian and Pacific Islander include both Hispanic and non-Hispanic. Those in the Hispanic or Latino category include those identified as being in one of the non-White race groups.

Notes

Updated May 2013.
S - Estimates suppressed when the confidence interval around the percentage is greater than or equal to 10 percentage points. N.A. – Data not available. 
A 90 percent confidence interval for each estimate can be found at Children whose parents lack secure employment by race and ethnicity.

Last Updated

March 2019