A recent study found that, despite hopes for an economic recovery after a crippling recession, Wisconsin children are still waiting for relief from poverty.

According to a study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, an organization dedicated to aiding disadvantaged children, more Wisconsin children live at or below the poverty line since the advent of the recession. Since the recession began, the state’s child poverty rate has increased five points to 19 percent.

Wisconsin Council on Children and Families spokesperson Bob Jacobson said growing up in poverty can have detrimental consequences for children, including health problems and increased interactions with the criminal justice system. He added children surrounded by poverty in their adolescence can also experience further damaging effects.

“It’s bad to grow up in a poor household where most of your other neighbors are middle class, but it’s not as bad as growing up in a neighborhood where everyone’s poor,” Jacobson said.

University of Wisconsin sociology professor Felix Elwert also said growing up in poverty-stricken neighborhoods can have long-lasting effects. Children who grow up in poor communities are far less likely to graduate from high school than children in non-disadvantaged neighborhoods, which in turn can greatly affect their incomes later in life.

Elwert said poverty has not only increased in Wisconsin but is a nationwide trend. Child poverty began to rise before the recession, with an upward trend that began in 2000. The trend has faced a dramatic increase since 2006.

Wisconsin’s child poverty rate is still below the national average, but has been growing increasingly quicker since the recession. Milwaukee has historically had the highest concentrations of poverty in Wisconsin, Jacobson said. Among the 50 biggest cities in the country with children in poverty-striken areas, Milwaukee ranks fourth.

As a result of these issues, poverty should be viewed as a community-wide problem and needs to be addressed at the state level, according to Jacobson. He said state governments are currently not adequately addressing child poverty, particularly in terms of the “massive” cuts to healthcare and early education. 

Tim Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty, also said child poverty is an area to be taken more seriously by society and government officials.

“Poverty matters and hurts low-income kids in a number of ways,” Smeeding said. “Why child poverty has gone up and how is something that ought to be thought about more carefully.”

Jacobson said there have been some efforts to combat poverty in Wisconsin, including Vision 220, a program launched by the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families. The program focuses on the areas of healthcare, quality of early education, safe and affordable housing and financially-supportive jobs for families living in poverty.

Elwert said a decrease in the child poverty rate is not guaranteed if the nation is able to fully emerge from the economic recession, a concern that Jacobson echoed.

“We would certainly hope that as the economy recovers, we’d see some decrease in the child poverty rate,” Jacobson said. “We remain hopeful, but we can’t assume things are going to improve quickly.”