Measuring Need for Youth Services in D.C.: Comparing Poverty and TANF Data

In this brief, DC Agenda and the Urban Institute examine the location of children in poverty by age and race in the District of Columbia and compare this information to the numbers and locations of children receiving welfare assistance. We find that more than half of Washington, D.C.’s poor children live east of the Anacostia River in wards 7 and 8. Three neighborhood clusters—two of them east of the river and one in ward 1—are home to 30 percent of all poor children. The majority of children receiving TANF live east of the Anacostia River, although neighborhood clusters outside wards 7 and 8 also have large numbers of child TANF recipients.