This article through the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute reviews data by State on income levels. For the most part, the income gap between the highest-income families and poor and middle-income families significantly increased in the last 20 years.

HHS Secretary Donna E. Shalala announced that 28 states have been awarded high performance bonuses created to reward superior results in welfare reform. The $200 million in annual bonuses, established in the 1996 welfare reform law, was given to the states with the best achievement in moving parents on welfare into jobs and their success in staying employed and increasing their earnings.

Three-city study from Johns Hopkins University examines who is affected by sanctions and case closings and why.

This report, utilizing the Annie E. Casey Kids Count Data book, provides an overview of negative child outcomes that are a result of poverty. From 2000 data, it was found that negative child outcomes are highly correlated with lower income levels. Over 25 million children, which is 36 percent, live in families with an annual income of less than $35,000. The findings suggest that programs should utilize conditions other than poverty threshold to determine eligibility for assistance.

This article, from the Urban Institute, evaluates trends in child poverty across the country in the past ten years. Child poverty rates experienced a sharp decline from 1993 to 2000, but increased from 2000 to 2004. The trends show that the State unemployment rate and real minimum wage are factors that have contributed the most to these shifting trends in child poverty.

This transcript from the Brookings Institution provides information from a Brookings briefing on the latest Census numbers on poverty and income. Experts on the panel included Ron Haskins, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution; Larry Aber, Professor of Applied Psychology and Public Policy, New York University; Ron Mincy, Professor of Social Policy and Social Work Practice, Columbia University; Gary Burtless, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution; and Brigid Schulte, Staff Writer, The Washington Post.

This article from the National Center for Children in Poverty provides data on low-income children in the U.S. Since 2000, the number of children living in low-income families has increased. Data includes national and States’ data on the characteristics of low-income children over the past ten years.

This resource from the National Center for Children in Poverty reviews data surrounding educational achievement among low-income parents. Authors found that most children in low-income families have parents without a college degree. Additionally, 26 percent of children in low-income families (7.2 million), have parents with less than a high school diploma, and 36 percent (10.2 million), have parents with a high school diploma without a college degree.

Since the PRWORA of 1996, States have had greater flexibility in creating public assistance programs to serve families. From the U.S. Census Bureau, this report provides an overview of national participation in the following assistance programs: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), General Assistance (GA), food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, Medicaid and housing benefits.

Between 2000 and 2005, the poverty rate for children in the United States increased by 11 percent, which equates to 1.3 million more children living in poverty. This fact sheet, from the National Center for Children in Poverty, provides the demographics of these children who live below the poverty threshold.