THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 23, 1995 TAG: 9508230491
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Short : 40 lines
Mothers who receive food stamps are younger, have more children and began having children earlier than those who don't get the assistance, the Census Bureau reports.
Overall, about 5.3 million of the 36 million mothers aged 15 to 44 received food stamps during the summer of 1993, the bureau said in a statistical brief. The report is one of a series looking at women taking part in government programs.
The average age of mothers who received food stamps was 30, the report found, compared with an average of 34 for mothers who were not receiving the assistance.
In addition, food stamp recipients had more children than non-recipients. There were 26 children for every 10 food-stamp mothers, compared to 21 for mothers not receiving stamps.
On average, mothers getting the stamps were 20 years old when they had their first child, compared to 23 for other mothers. The report found that 27 percent of food-stamp mothers had their first child before age 18, compared with 15 percent of other mothers.
Other findings of the report:
About one in three black mothers of childbearing age were food stamp recipients, compared to one in nine whites and one in four Hispanics.
Foreign-born mothers were less likely to receive food stamps than mothers born in the United States, 13 percent to 15 percent.
While rates varied widely by age, food-stamp mothers were more likely to have had their first birth out-of-wedlock than women not receiving the stamps. by CNB