A study using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) found that nearly half of American children and 90% of black kids will be on food stamps at some point. See the Associated Press story.

Source: Rank, M.R., & Hirschl, T.A. (2009). Estimating the Risk of Food Stamp Use and Impoverishment During Childhood. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. 163(11):994-999.

The Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) 2008 Wave 1 core data is now available in SodaPop.

Penn State researchers can download SIPP data and documentation from the SodaPop web site.

PRI researchers may also access data files on our network using Windows or UNIX. Click on the “pri affiliates” tab on the SodaPop page for file locations.

All waves and topical modules for SIPP 2004 is now available To Penn State researchers on SodaPop.

The number of working poor families in the US increased between 2002 and 2006, according to a new report from the Working Poor Families Project. The report, Still Working Hard, Still Falling Short, includes state-level data and maps.

Reversing a trend from the 1990s, poverty has become more concentrated from 2000 to 2005, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution (Christian Science Monitor).

For their study, authors Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube used Census data and Earned Income Tax Credit data from the IRS. They found that the number of poor people living in high poverty communities increased for the majority of metropolitan areas studied.

Citation: Kneebone, E. & Berube, A. (2008). Reversal of Fortune: A New Look at Concentrated Poverty in the 2000s. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

SIPP has released Core Waves 7 and 8 and Topical Module Waves 1-8. PRI Researchers using this data are encouraged to look at SodaPop, PRI’s Data Archive for updated holdings.

Widening gaps in educational attainment threaten economic mobility for the poor, according to a report from the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Economic Mobility Project (Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog).

See also: New York Times article,  Getting Ahead or Losing Ground: Economic Mobility in America (Economic Mobility Project report)

Growing up poor alters brain development, and new research presented at the annual meeting of American Association for the Advancement of Science could help ameliorate the effects of poverty on academic achievement, according to a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education. (Note: The Chronicle article is available online to subscribers. PRI affiliates can read the Chronicle in the PRI Library or request online access from library@pop.psu.edu.)

Citation: Farah, M.J., Betancourt, L., Shera, D.M., et al. (in press). Environmental Stimulation, Parental Nurturance and Cognitive Development in Humans. Developmental Science. (available online)

Penn State has been able to purchase a one year subscription to Latinobarometro Latinobarometro is an annual public opinion survey that involves some 19,000 interviews in 18 Latin American countries, representing more than 400 million inhabitants. Penn State researchers interested in the survey can Click here for more information and access the survey.

The number of South Africans living on less than $1 a day doubled between 1996 and 2005, according to a survey by the South African Institute of Race Relations (BBC News).