We interviewed Dr. Yang Jiang who is the Senior Research Associate, Demography for the NCCP. She gave us a lot of information about child poverty and homelessness. We learned a lot about how child poverty has changed over the years and also about how adult poverty has changed. Ms. Jiang also educated us on food insecurity, hunger, and food stamps and how much so many families depend on them. Some interesting statistics that we found out are that Mississippi has the highest poverty rate at 31%, and New Hampshire has the lowest at 15%. New York is somewhere in the middle at 21%. Around 16.9 – 21% of children are in poverty. Black and African Americans have the highest poverty rate, 38% of black kids under 18 are in poverty and 27% of black adults. Lastly the poverty rate had decreased from 2001-2012. Though this is true, each year the child poverty rate increases. On this visit all the members of our group helped in making this phone call successful. While Lola took notes, Brandon recorded the conversation, I spoke to Ms. Jiang, and Mei and Brandon helped me with the questions we were asking her. We all helped, especially Ms. Jiang, in making this call very informative. For our Teach-In I want to remember all of the statistics and information that Ms. Jiang gave us. We learned a lot even just from our short conversation and I want to share that with the rest of the middle school.
