Poverty and Hardship Among Families with Young Children Before and During the Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated inequality among New Yorkers, and these impacts are especially concerning for young children, since disadvantage can profoundly affect their subsequent health and development. This report uses four years of data from the Early Childhood Poverty Tracker to describe the prevalence of poverty and disadvantage among families with young children in New York City. The pre-COVID data on poverty and economic well-being is combined with data from surveys conducted after the COVID-19 outbreak in 2019 to examine patterns of income and racial/ethnic inequality.

Key Findings:

• Between 2017 and 2020, over half (54%) of all young children in New York City spent at least a year in poverty, including 66% of Black children and 66% of Latino children.

• More than half of all working families with young children reported a loss of earnings due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Among mothers who were working before the pandemic, one in four were not working a year later, 10% had shifted from full-to part-time work, and one in four experienced other forms of earnings loss in the early months of the pandemic. Black and Latina women were more likely than White women to have stopped working.

• Among young children who were in school, about half of Black and Latino children attended remotely during the fall of 2020, compared with one in five White children. Remote schooling was also more common among lower-income than higher-income children.