diff --git a/lib/rss/rss.rb b/lib/rss/rss.rb
index d161366f92..00db219d4e 100644
--- a/lib/rss/rss.rb
+++ b/lib/rss/rss.rb
@@ -957,7 +957,7 @@ EOC
             children = child
             children.any? {|c| c.have_required_elements?}
           else
-            !child.to_s.empty?
+            not child.nil?
           end
         else
           true
diff --git a/test/rss/test_to_s.rb b/test/rss/test_to_s.rb
index b8ef0d8da4..bbdd74ef0b 100644
--- a/test/rss/test_to_s.rb
+++ b/test/rss/test_to_s.rb
@@ -109,6 +109,30 @@ module RSS
                    '[ruby-core:70667] [Bug #11509]')
     end
 
+    def test_20_empty_text
+      title = "Blog entries"
+      link = "http://blog.example.com/"
+      description = ""
+      rss = RSS::Maker.make("2.0") do |maker|
+        maker.channel.title = title
+        maker.channel.link = link
+        maker.channel.description = description
+      end
+
+      parsed_rss = RSS::Parser.parse(rss.to_s)
+      assert_equal({
+                     title: title,
+                     link: link,
+                     description: description,
+                   },
+                   {
+                     title: parsed_rss.channel.title,
+                     link: parsed_rss.channel.link,
+                     description: parsed_rss.channel.description,
+                   },
+                   "[ruby-core:80965] [Bug #13531]")
+    end
+
     private
     def setup_xml_declaration_info
       @version = "1.0"
diff --git a/version.h b/version.h
index bb1128f2c3..b188f9b420 100644
--- a/version.h
+++ b/version.h
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 #define RUBY_VERSION "2.4.2"
 #define RUBY_RELEASE_DATE "2017-07-23"
-#define RUBY_PATCHLEVEL 147
+#define RUBY_PATCHLEVEL 148
 
 #define RUBY_RELEASE_YEAR 2017
 #define RUBY_RELEASE_MONTH 7