Study: One in six US children affected by unemployment

The study noted that around a quarter of the children in families with an unemployed or underemployed parent get help from unemployment insurance, while 29 percent of those families receive help food stamps, welfare or both programs. (Twelve percent of families fit both those descriptions.)

{mosads}Julia Isaacs of The Urban Institute, the study’s author, said that the roughly three in 10 children living in families that need food stamps and/or welfare but don’t qualify for jobless insurance could be the most affected by unemployment.

Still, Isaacs wrote, “for all groups, the risk of economic hardship and the threats to children’s well-being increase with longer periods of unemployment.”

The report also says that a stronger economic recovery, or policies meant to help parents get back to work, “would be most helpful for children.”