Child poverty rates in NC fell during 1st year of COVID-19. Why are advocates worried they’ll climb again?
“’I think we see now that we have evidence about what policies work,’ Crouse said. ‘It might be too early to end them.’
While those rates have gone down, the raw number — nearly a million children — is still a big one, and those percentages swing wildly between the counties.
They also mirror those county rates of food insecurity cited previously by another nonprofit that worried that ending child nutrition waivers for schools and daycare centers put into place early in the COVID-19 pandemic would send more kids into poverty and food insecurity.
The North Carolina counties with the lowest rates of child food insecurity also have the lowest child poverty rates, and vice versa.”