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Child poverty stats a call to action says Fiscal Policy Institute

An analysis by the non-partisan Fiscal Policy Institute (FPI) of new data released by the U.S. Census Bureau has highlighted extreme income equality in NY state and provided and alarming picture of the extent of child poverty in upstate.

The FPI's analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau's 2011 American Community Survey compared poverty rates in 39 New York State counties that have a population of 65,000 people or more. In addition the FPI depicted the poverty data for the total population under 18 years old.

The Institute's analysis of the Census Bureau data concluded that:

More than half the children in Rochester and Syracuse lived in poverty in 2011 and Buffalo (46.8%), Schenectady (50.8%) and Albany (37%) were not far behind.

It went on to comment:

The poverty situation is particularly dire in the Upstate cities and among children. When those two factors are looked at together, alarm bells should be going off in policymakers’ offices.

A link to the Fiscal Policy Institute study is here.