Child poverty is on the rise across Minnesota.

The Children's Defense Fund released a stark report today showing thousands of Minnesota children, many of them pre–schoolers, living in poverty.

The rate has jumped 33–percent since 2–thousand as LeAnn Wallace reports.

"We've had an increase in poverty that leaves 150,000 children living below the poverty line today. 50,000 of those children are below the age of five."

Another 200,000 children across the state are living just above the poverty line.

Poverty is defined as a family of four making $21,000 or less a year.
The Damiano Center's Kid Café program has stepped up to try to help those kids.

They received a "Star of the State Award" from the Children's Defense Fund, for creatively responding to the food and nutritional needs of Duluth's children.

"Our main goal is to increase the kid's nutrition while they're developing, we want to reduce generational poverty so they can do better in school, and get further out of poverty."

"Over one–third of school–aged kids in Saint Louis County receive free or reduced price lunches at school."

Kid's Café in Duluth is one place kids and their families can go year–'round to get a good meal. That's especially helpful during the summer months when school lunches aren't available.

Kid's Café serves over 5,000 meals a year and while that makes a huge difference for those living in poverty the director of the Minnesota Children's Defense Fund says it's a temporary solution to a long–term problem.

"Poverty costs us a lot of money, and if we don't do something about it, we will pay more, and continue to pay more, for the cost of that child growing up in poverty, the cost of that child failing in school.

Jim Koppel says allowing families to stay in poverty costs Minnesota taxpayers 5–point–7–billion dollars a year for things like food stamps, juvenile welfare intervention and lost taxes.

Koppel recommends a concerted effort to provide better tax–cuts for low income families, raising the minimum wage, and making it easier for families to get on health care and food stamp programs.

In Duluth, LeAnn Wallace, the Northlands News Center.

Research shows that developmentally a child who lives in poverty is 18 months behind in school by the time they hit kindergarten.