A growing number of US children are living amid poverty and stark racial inequities in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, a new report has found, suggesting the economic recovery has not helped families return to their pre-recession security.

Twenty-two percent of American children lived in poverty in 2013, according to the latest Kids Count Data Book, compared to 18% in 2008. The organization that compiled the report, child advocacy group the Annie E Casey Foundation, found it “especially troubling” that children are increasingly likely to grow up in a high-poverty neighborhood.

“Even though the recovery has generated a lot of jobs and we’re seeing the stock market do well,” the foundation president, Patrick McCarthy, said, “the rising tide of the recovery has not lifted all boats equally.”

Some 16 million children lived in poverty in 2013, he said, and one in seven lived in poor areas where bad schools, higher crime and all the negative consequences of a low tax base reduced their own prospects – regardless of their families’ income.

The figure has steadily increased since 2000, when 9% of children lived in a high-poverty area. Fewer lived with parents who had full-time, year-round employment, and more lived in single-parent homes.

The foundation also found striking disparities along racial lines. “Inequities among children remain deep and stubbornly persistent,” the authors wrote.

African American children were twice as likely to live in high-poverty areas and to live in single-parent homes compared to white children. In all, 39% of African American children lived in poverty in 2013, compared to 33% of Hispanic children, 14% of white kids and a 22% national average.

“You’ve got not just decades but literally hundreds of years of discrimination, lack of opportunity and challenges for African American, Latino, American Indian families,” McCarthy said, adding that the obstacles of discrimination compounded with broader trends, creating cycles of poverty that could last generations.

“It used to be you had a high school diploma you could find a job, and if you worked hard you could move your family into the middle class. Now many of those jobs have gone overseas, others replaced by technology.”

American Indians have also lived in particularly dire conditions. Half of all American Indian children lived with parents who lacked secure employment or in a single-parent home in 2013, 30% lived in a high-poverty area, and 16% had no health insurance.

Problems were at their worst in the south, south-west and Appalachia, corresponding with the poorest states in the union. One in three Mississippi children lived in poverty, and 12% of teenagers in Mississippi and Louisiana neither attended school nor had jobs, the report found. Nevada ranked worst for education among all the states, with 40% of its teenagers failing to graduate high school and almost 70% of its children not attending preschool.

Although not ranked with the 50 states, Washington DC and Puerto Rico “experienced some of the worst outcomes” compared to the other parts of the US, the authors wrote.

In contrast, the north-east and midwest ranked best for lower rates of poverty and better education systems. Minnesota ranked first for the overall wellbeing of its children, followed by New Hampshire and Massachusetts, where 98% of children had health insurance. Families were most economically secure in North Dakota, and the foundation rated Massachusetts best for education.

Positive signs include fewer uninsured children overall and the all-time high in national high school graduation rates, although McCarthy cautioned that many students are still not sufficiently proficient in math and reading.

He said the foundation calls for a “two-generation approach” that invests in parents and children, including support systems like tax credits, job training and food stamps, as well as much greater investment in early education. He also said that businesses could do more, including schedule employees with flexible work hours.

The foundation has also developed a database that allows users to research poverty issues down to the zip code and congressional district.