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Reducing Child Poverty

The generally high living standards of poor Americans are good news. Even better is the fact that our nation can substantially reduce remaining poverty, especially among children. To accomplish this, we must focus on the main causes of child poverty: low levels of parental work and high levels of single parenthood.

In good economic times or bad, the typical poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of work during a year: That amounts to 16 hours of work per week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year—the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week through the year—nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of official poverty.³⁴

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/bg2064.cfm