A new report says the number of American children living in poverty is dropping -- but it's still higher than before the Great Recession.
Twenty-two percent of American children were living in poverty in 2013, according to data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a Baltimore-based child advocacy group. That's a one-point drop from the previous year, but still higher than 2008, when the share of children living in poverty sat at 18%.
That number climbed to 23% in 2012, where it maxed out before beginning to dip in 2013.
Children in the South and Southwest were the worst off, with 34% -- or 1 in 3 -- of Mississippi children living in poverty. New Hampshire had the lowest level of child poverty with just 10%.
The foundation's numbers back up trends from an earlier study this month, from the Pew Research Center, that analyzed Census data and found poverty rates were especially high for African-American children.
That study found that while poverty rates fell for Hispanic, white and Asian children, the figures had not changed for black children -- 38.3% of whom lived in poverty in 2013. That's nearly four times the rate of white children.
Additional information from the Associated Press.