Study: Severe Obesity Rates in Low-Income Latino Children Are Rising



Latino children accounted for the highest increase in severe obesity among preschool-aged children from low-income households, a new CDC study found. The study examined children aged 2 to 4 under the enrollment of the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, which is a federal nutrition assistance program aimed at providing healthy foods for low-income women who are pregnant, breastfeeding, or postpartum, and children up to 5 years old, from 2010 to 2020. When the study began in 2010, 2.1% of children aged 2 to 4 in WIC were severely obese. A downward trend in severe obesity occurred for the next several years, when rates in that age group went from 2.1% in 2010 to 1.8% in 2016, the CDC study found. However, by the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, that number spiked back up to 2% in ...

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Many Latino Families Struggle with Child Care Cost, Access



Child care is crucial for Latino and all families, but some face issues with access and cost.   While many Latino households with low incomes used no-cost child care, those who paid out-of-pocket tended to face very high costs, according to a new research brief from the National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families (Hispanic Research Center).  “Our findings suggest a need for sustained and varied investments to support affordable child care access for Hispanic families with low incomes,” according to the Hispanic Research Center.   Let’s dig deeper into how this impacts Latino families.   Child care Costs for Latinos   The Hispanic Research Center examined data from the 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education to explore the average weekly hours ...

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Report: Latino Families Twice as Likely as Others to Be Low-Income



Working families led by blacks and Latinos are twice as likely as those headed by whites and Asians to be poor or low-income, according to a new report by the Working Families Project, the Washington Post reports. Less than 1 in 4 white working families earned less than 200 percent of the poverty level, which is $40,180 for a family of three, in 2013. More than 1 in 2 Latino families earned less. What's the reason? The report authors cited differences in jobs, wages (Hispanics tended to have low-paying jobs), education, family structure and benefits: Also, more than half of low-income Hispanic families had at least one parent who did not complete high school. By contrast, just 16 percent of white workers were high school dropouts. Still, educational differences explain ...

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Report: Minorities, Especially Latinos, Experience Inequalities in Health, Access to Care



Despite slow improvements in the quality of care overall, access is worsening and health care disparities, particularly for minorities and groups with lower socioeconomic status, have seen little to no improvement, according to a new report. The report, the 11th annual National Healthcare Disparities Report, is conducted annually by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), found that, compared with whites, racial/ethnic minorities receive worse care across 25-40% of quality measures. Poor and low-income people receive worse care than individuals with high income for about 60% of quality measures. These disparities are even more pronounced for measures of health care access, and among particular racial/ethnic groups. Hispanics had worse access to care than Whites ...

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