Helping families with children achieve economic independence is a core goal of the Administration of Children & Families (ACF). To this end, many ACF programs, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), include efforts to support the paid employment of parents in economically vulnerable families. However, adult employment is already quite common in the households of Hispanic children in families with low incomes.
Most Hispanic children in families with low incomes —in other words, families whose incomes fall below 200 percent of the Federal poverty threshold (or the Federal Poverty Level, FPL)—live with an employed adult, based on our analysis of the 2023 American Community Survey. As shown in Figure 1:
- Approximately 9 in 10 (89%) Hispanic children living in families with low incomes have at least one employed adult in the household. Most of this employment is full-time: Specifically, more than two thirds (68%) of Hispanic children in families with low incomes live with an adult who works full-time (at least 35 hours per week).
- Living with an employed adult is more common among Hispanic children in immigrant families (meaning at least one parent was born outside the United States) with low incomes: 93 percent of children in immigrant families live with at least one employed adult and 72 percent live with an adult employed full-time; comparable figures among Hispanic children who live with only U.S.-born parents are 84 percent and 63 percent, respectively.
Additionally, for all Hispanic children, regardless of family income or whether their parents were born in the United States, 95 percent have at least one employed adult in their household and 82 percent live with an adult employed full-time (see Table A in the Appendix).