Eradicating Child Poverty: Time to Invest in Kids

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: children in the United States are not doing well. As a nation, we spend far less on our kids than other wealthy countries and the outcomes of this tight-fisted budgeting are apparent when we look at comparisons of child mental and physical health, academic and social skill sets, and overall well-being. The good news is that we now have the opportunity to start to change this—if we have the courage to act.

One of the best indicators of how poorly our kids are doing is the incredibly high rate of child poverty in America. As I’ve shared previously, each year the Innocenti Project of UNICEF issues a report detailing a specific aspect of child well-being in the world’s richest countries. In last fall’s Report Card 16 – Worlds of Influence: Understanding What Shapes Child Wellbeing in Rich Countries, the U.S. was ranked 37th of 41 countries in child poverty. Data prior to the COVID-19 pandemic notes that approximately 14.4 percent of children—nearly 11 million kids—under age 18 were living below the U.S. federal poverty rate, with 6 percent living in deep poverty. The American Academy of Pediatrics notes that poverty shapes all outcomes of childhood well-being, and a comprehensive study on child poverty conducted by the non-partisan National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine found that poverty, especially when pervasive and occurring early in childhood, causes negative outcomes for children. In the Fall 2020 Innocenti Report, the U.S. ranked second from the bottom amongst 38 countries, based on scores of children’s mental and physical health and academic and social skill sets.

The National Academies recognized the importance of fixing this and made recommendations for solutions in their 2019 report. The impacts of the global pandemic coupled with the ongoing effects of systemic racial injustice have only exacerbated the struggles our kids face to grow up healthy and thrive. Our knowledge of how to eradicate childhood poverty is not new, but we now have an opportunity, through President Biden’s American Rescue Plan, to address childhood poverty head-on. The plan isn’t perfect, but it does something that hasn’t been done in such a straightforward way in decades: demonstrably reduce our child poverty rate and effectually stifle what the AAP notes to be “detrimental health consequences that are severe and lifelong” and correlated with living a life of poverty. Simply put, this plan presents us with a real opportunity to invest in kids.

It is critical to remember that child poverty is inextricably linked to adult poverty. The pandemic has increased the number of poor children, adults, and families, and women and people of color have been disproportionately affected. Growing up impoverished often leads to an intergenerational cycle of poverty. In the U.S., we have long known what it will take to eliminate poverty for children in our country. I stand by the argument that in a nation as wealthy as ours, it is a moral failure that we have millions of children who are homeless, who suffer from food insecurity, and whose parents continue to face barriers to employment or who earn non-livable wages.

There is also an economic argument to employ strategies designed to lift individuals, families, and therefore, children, out of poverty: at our current rate, the cost of childhood poverty—stemming from crime, health disparities, and lower income levels earned as adults—is estimated to be between $800 billion and $1.1 trillion. We know that investments in anti-poverty programs such as housing vouchers, food stamps, cash grants, Medicaid, childcare funding, and tax credits are all linked to better academic outcomes for kids. Research has shown that rising from the struggles of poverty also helps to break its intergenerational cycle.

President Biden’s proposed expanded child tax credit—which is gaining support from both sides of the aisle—carries the promise of slashing our current child poverty rate in half, from 13.6 percent to 7.5 percent. For children of color, poverty rates would fall from over 20 percent to 11 percent. Many organizations, including First Focus on Children and the Children’s Defense Fund have long championed legislature that reduces child poverty rates; their policy advocates tout the President’s proposal as a landmark opportunity to make a difference in the lives of millions of children.

Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) has been pushing for an extension of the Child Tax Credit since 2003, and together with Democratic Senators Mike Bennet (D-CO) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Representative Suzan Delbene (D-WA), recently introduced legislation to further expand President Biden’s proposed Child Tax Credit, including making it fully refundable and permanent so that as many families as possible are eligible to receive the credit. In addition, while defunding related programs such as TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families) to cover the cost of the Child Tax Credit is not an acceptable tradeoff, it is encouraging to see the proposals coming from Senators Mitt Romney (R-UT), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Mike Lee (R-AZ). It is imperative—and inspiring—that our elected leaders are thinking about kids and determined to ensure that their basic needs are met!

It is my hope that the expanded Child Tax Credit, in whatever form it takes, is the first step in the development of an overall, comprehensive plan to raise the priority of kids in our country. The attention we are seeing to address child poverty gives me hope that we can move from simply investing in programs for targeted populations (i.e. the poor) to backing programs—universal childcare, preschool, and nutrition services—with broader appeal and that impact our entire child population. If we want to be a nation that truly values children, let’s make investments in the well-being of all our kids and create structures that hold our elected leaders accountable. After all, kids who are thriving contribute to their communities and states, and ultimately, a country that is thriving with them.

We all can agree that the health and well-being of children are not partisan issues. Let our actions now be stepping stones to a greater commitment to equity and opportunity for all of our young people.