More facing threat of hunger with parents unemployed.

    Washington - A growing number of American children are living in poverty and with unemployed parents, and are facing the threat of hunger, according to a new federal report released yesterday.

    According to "America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being," 18 percent of all children 17 and under were living in poverty in 2007 -- up from 17 percent in 2006. The percentage of children who had at least one parent working full time was 77 percent in 2007 -- down from 78 percent in 2006. And those living in households with extremely low "food security" -- where parents described children as being hungry or having skipped a meal or gone without eating for an entire day -- increased from 0.6 percent in 2006 to 0.9 percent in 2007, the report said.

The number of children living in poverty and homeless is growing. Today, over 337,000 children are living without permanent housing. (Photo: Getty)

    Federal officials said the statistics released this week pre-date the current economic downturn and forecast darker times for the country's 74 million children 17 and under, when data on children's lives during the recession become available.

    "It foreshadows greater changes we'll see when we look at these figures next year," said Dr. Duane Alexander, director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Heath, one of the government agencies that participated in the study.

    The report is an annual compilation of statistics on child welfare from several government agencies, including the U.S. Census. It tracks trends in family life, health care, safety and education.

    Drawing on previously released census data, the report painted a picture of a young population that is holding steady as a proportion of the population, at about 24 percent -- a percentage not expected to change through 2021.

    But the report also showed racial and ethnic backgrounds and living circumstances are undergoing dramatic shifts. The percentage of children who are Hispanic, for example, has increased faster than it has for any other racial or ethnic group, from 9 percent of the population in 1980 to 22 percent in 2008.

    Forty percent of all children were born to unmarried women in 2007, up from 34 percent in 2002, according to the report, which reiterated a federal study of birth certificates released earlier this year. Experts say that trend has resulted from the lessening stigma of unwed motherhood, an increase in the number of couples who delay or forgo marriage and growing numbers of women who want to have babies on their own.

    At the same time, the teen pregnancy rate ticked up slightly for the second year in a row, to 22.2 per 1,000 girls ages 15 to 17, after years of decline.

    Dr. Alexander said there were some bright spots in this year's report, beginning with the fact that 89 percent of children had health insurance in 2007 -- up from 88 percent in 2006.

    Experts are hoping that a very slight decline in the number infants born preterm or with low birth weights after years of steady increases also could be the start of a trend, although the decreases were minuscule.

    Preterm births made up 12.7 percent of the total, down from 12.8 percent in 2006, and the proportion of low-birth-weight infants was 8.2 percent, down from 8.3 percent in 2006.

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