Child Poverty Rate Is 17% in Oxnard : Census: A new report shows 7,354 live in poor families. Levels are much lower in Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley.

The latest U. S. Census figures show nearly one-fifth of Oxnard’s children living in poverty, while Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks have some of the lowest child-poverty rates in California, according to a report released Tuesday by a national children’s advocacy group.

Of the 42,643 children living in Oxnard in 1989, 7,354, or 17.2% live in impoverished families, the Children’s Defense Fund reported in the first city-by-city survey of its kind conducted since the 1990 census.

“It’s interesting that this poverty is widespread,” said Deborah Ellwood, associate director of policy for Children Now, a California group that published the report. “It’s not just an urban issue, it’s a rural issue, and more and more poor children live in rural areas.”

Federal authorities define poverty as an income of $9,885 or less earned by a family of three people, or $12,675 or less earned by a family of four, Ellwood said.

For children, living in poverty “generally means that they’re three times more likely to die in infancy, four times more likely to become pregnant as a teen-ager, and more likely to suffer serious illness, abuse or neglect and to drop out of school,” said Julie Goetz, a Children Now spokeswoman.

Far fewer children live in poverty in Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks, where housing prices and the average standard of living are higher, Ellwood said.

Only 1,047, or 3.8% of Simi Valley’s 27,473 children live in poverty; and 1,242, or 4.8% of Thousand Oaks’ 25,643 children live in poverty, according to the Children’s Defense Fund report, which examined cities with populations of more than 100,000.

Ventura County cities had lower poverty rates than the national average. More than one-fourth of children living in cities of 100,000 or more were classified as poverty-stricken in 1989, the Children’s Defense Fund reported.

Detroit had the worst ranking in the survey, with 47% of its 296,543 children under the age of 18 living below the poverty line. The study said 28% of the children in Los Angeles were impoverished, but it treated the neighborhood of East Los Angeles as a separate entity, and said the child poverty rate there was 32%.

Recent Census figures show that 31 million Americans, or 12% of the overall population, live below the poverty line.

The city-by-city survey mirrors findings of other recent studies. A report released by CDF last month showed that California has the most poor children of any state. That report concluded that 11.2 million American children, or about 18%, lived in poor families in 1989. The number has increased by 841,000 as a result of the recession, the organization said.

“Extraordinary high levels of child poverty have become pervasive in America,” CDF President Marian Wright Edelman said in a prepared statement. “When will we wake up to the fact that we are crippling our economic future by allowing the next generation of American workers, parents and citizens to grow up in poverty?”

Edelman called for Senate passage of the House-approved Children’s Initiative, a bill designed to reduce child abuse and increase food stamp assistance. She also urged expansion of youth employment programs, such as the Job Corps.

Jim Weill, who helped prepare the CDF report, said that while the nation as a whole grew wealthier during the 1980s, the disparity between the rich and poor grew wider.

About 10,000 American children “die of poverty” each year, Weill said, citing as examples deaths attributable to inadequate medical care and malnutrition.

Weill attributed the spread of child poverty to lower wages for unskilled workers, depressed family incomes and a faltering economy.

“These are the kids that are showing up in our emergency rooms, sicker and later than they should be,” said Susan Bales, a spokeswoman for the Coalition for America’s Children, a youth lobbying group of 180 organizations. “It used to be that kids would primarily come in because of chronic illnesses or because of medical pathologies. Now, they come in because of social pathologies.”

Child Poverty in California

Here is how various California cities or areas ranked in child poverty in a survey of 200 U.S. cities. The figures show the percentage of children living below the poverty line: Fresno: 36.9

East Los Angeles *: 31.6

Oakland: 30.3

Sacramento: 28.6

Los Angeles: 28.0

Long Beach: 27.3

Pasadena: 22.7

Inglewood: 22.2

San Diego: 19.8

San Francisco: 18.6

Oxnard: 17.2

Anaheim: 15.3

Riverside: 15.0

Garden Grove: 14.6

Torrance: 6.9

Thousand Oaks: 4.8

Simi Valley: 3.8

* Rates were tallied separately for East Los Angeles and the rest of the city.

Source: Children’s Defense Fund