Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Welfare US


This illustrates the rapid decline in families on welfare in the US.

The red line is families on welfare, the majority single parent families though a surprisingly large percentage headed by an aunt or grandparent.

The green line is the number of female single parent families living in 'poverty'.

The blue line is births to unmarried mothers. Because it represents absolute numbers it continues to rise but I think if it were a percentage of all births it might be levelling or declining slightly.

There are now 1.9 million families on welfare. One-parent families make up 53.8 percent, two parent families 1.7 percent and families headed by a grandparent, aunt etc 44.5 percent

As a rough guide there are around 76 million families in the US, so 2.5 percent are on welfare.

NZ has approximately 1.1 million families with around 11 percent on welfare.

(Graph from Scientific American May 2006)

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