Children in America Held Captive (by Poverty)

Children's Defense Fund

This Christmas season 15.5 million children in America, more than one in five, are living in poverty, a number of them in extreme poverty. This is the highest child poverty rate the nation has experienced since 1959. Each one of these children has a name, a unique face and story to tell. That is why CDF has just released a new report, “Held Captive”: Child Poverty in America, which chronicles the real life toll child poverty is having on millions of children in the richest nation in history. The report, commissioned by CDF and written by Pulitzer prize winning journalist Julia Cass, found foreign aid supporting programs for children in an impoverished county in Mississippi, Katrina-displaced children still struggling in Baton Rouge, La., and childhood disrupted for the newly poor in Long Island, N.Y. Cass reports that despite safety net protections put in place over the past generation, poor children are still adrift in a sea of poverty with their future in jeopardy. Download and read the full report, share it with your friends and get ready to join the fight to end child poverty in 2011 and beyond.