Map: More than Half the Children in Arlington View Neighborhood Live in Poverty

More than half of the children in the Arlington Views neighborhood — west of Interstate 395, just north of the Army Navy Country Club — live in poverty, according to the latest data available from the American Community Survey.

With Thanksgiving less than a week away, Patch is rolling out a series of interactive maps to raise awareness about people in the area who are doing without.

The map above shows a snapshot of the percentage of children living below the poverty line in Arlington. At a glance, the smallest percentages are concentrated north of Interstate 66.

Poverty can make life tremendously challenging for children. Studies show that children growing up in poverty are more likely to have problems in school, develop health issues and remain poor as adults.

More than 20 percent of all children in the United States live in poverty. That’s about 16.4 million children and 4.5 percent more than in the start of the Great Recession in 2007.

But in 2011, for the first time in years, the child-poverty rate essentially remained steady and continued to stay generally the same at 21.8 percent in 2012.

The data in this map comes from the United States Census Bureau's 2011 American Community Survey. These values are an estimate for 2011 taking into account 60 months of collected data. You can learn more about the survey here.

Using your cursor, hover over any census tract — the geographic region defined by the U.S. Census — and see in the box in the upper right corner the percentage of children living below the poverty line.

What do you think explains the differences across town in the percentage of children living below the poverty line? Tell us in a comment below or in a blog post.

Newscruncher is a daily series that breaks down the characteristics of your town by the numbers. You can see more posts by clicking the Newscruncher link above the headline or by checking out our weekend roundups. If you see any technical issues with this map, or if you'd like to suggest ideas for future Newscruncher articles, please email data@patch.com.

Arlington Patch Editor Jason Spencer contributed to this report.