Race and poverty: Divergent fortunes of America’s children?

It is widely believed that children in America may be on separate tracks into adulthood. On one track are economically advantaged children, many of whom reside with two highly educated parents. The other track typically includes poor children residing with a single mother or with two parents struggling to make ends meet in a changing global economy. In many ways, these tracks represent distinct fortunes along lines of racial and ethnic background. White children are proportionally over-represented among the more advantaged segments of the child population, while children of historically disadvantaged racial minorities and America’s “new” immigrants make up disproportionately large shares of the economically deprived.