An otherwise very good MSNBC report on poverty around the nation contains this assertion: "For the first time in more than 50 years, the majority of America's public school children are living in poverty."
Sounds bad. Fortunately, it isn't true. Of the nine in ten children who go to public school, roughly 23 percent live in poverty (to be fair, a very high number by developed world standards), as this Matt Bruenig analysis shows:
The linked report, from the Southern Education Foundation, does find that over half of public school kids are "low-income." This is a more expansive definition, which includes people living up to about twice the poverty line — very troubling to be sure, but not accurate to equate with full poverty.
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