MOSCOW, January 18 (Sputnik) – Mississippi is the leading US state in the number of poverty-stricken children attending public schools, a report released by the Southern Education Foundation (SEF) reveals.
"Thirteen of the 21 states with a majority of low income students in 2013 were located in the South, and six of the other 21 states were in the West. Mississippi led the nation with the highest rate: 71 percent, almost three out of every four public school children in Mississippi, were low-income," the SEF said in its January 2015 research bulletin.
"The latest data collected from the states by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), evidence that 51 percent of the students across the nation's public schools were low income in 2013," the SEF study concluded.
The research was based on children's eligibility for free or reduced-price lunches at US public schools.
According to the authors of the study, poverty rates among American schoolchildren have been increasing since 1989.
In 2013, the official US poverty rate was 14.5 percent, according to the US Census Bureau. Over 45 million people in the United States were living at or below the poverty line for the third consecutive year in 2013.