Northern Colorado community radio station KUNC reports that the number of children living in poverty in Colorado has gone down for the second year in a row, and health insurance coverage for the state’s younger residents is the highest it’s ever been.
According to federal census data, almost 17 percent of Colorado children lived in poverty in 2013. By the following year it had dropped by 2 percent, a significant decline. It’s been a year since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and the percentage of children in Colorado without health care hit 5.6 percent in 2014, improving three percentage points from 2013.
“We do know that child poverty tracks closely with the unemployment rate and so the fact that Colorado has seen very significant declines in its unemployment rate particularly in comparison to the rest of the nation I think does have to do with the decline we saw in the number of kids living in poverty,” said Sarah Hughes, the research director for the Colorado Children’s Campaign.
