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In The News

Efforts to reduce Cincinnati’s childhood poverty rate will ramp up in 2016

Original Source: WCPO.COM

BY: Lucy May

CINCINNATI — Depending on which U.S. Census Bureau data you look at, childhood poverty has either gotten worse or a little bit better in the city of Cincinnati.

Either way, though, tens of thousands of children in Cincinnati and Hamilton County are living below the federal poverty line. And 2016 is the year the city's business, political, civic and faith leaders are determined to come together in an initiative known as the Child Poverty Collaborative to reduce those numbers.

"The goal is zero children in poverty," said Michael Fisher, CEO of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and one of six co-chairs of the collaborative.

The community has a long way to go to get there.

Figures released as part of the Census Bureau's American Community Survey in early December showed that nearly half of all children in the city of Cincinnati — a stunning 47.2 percent — live below the federal poverty threshold. That's more than 30,000 children within the city limits.

For the Tri-State as a whole, one in five kids — or 105,000 — live below the federal poverty level.

For a family of three with two children under the age of 18, the federal poverty threshold was a household income of $19,073 per year in 2014.

Helping those kids will require helping their parents or guardians, said Rob Reifsnyder, president of United Way of Greater Cincinnati.

You can't get children out of poverty without helping their parents out of poverty, and you can't consider children and parents as two silos," Reifsnyder said.

Back in March, United Way unveiled a $100 million plan aimed at reducing poverty. Reifsnyder said the work of the collaborative is aimed at going beyond those efforts.