Don’t Assume That Child Poverty Will Continue To Decrease
A New York Times article made news by declaring that child poverty in the United States had significantly decreased. It reported that the child poverty rates fell to 5.2%, “the lowest rate ever recorded”, pulling an additional 3.4 million children out of poverty. This was hailed as a visible symbol of the US doing a great job caring for children. This announcement was a big deal, since the US has been found in multiple reports to have the highest rates of child poverty of most developed nations in the world over the course of many years. By international comparison levels, of the top 41 developed countries, the US scored 38 for children in poverty; only 3 nations had higher child poverty rates — Turkey. Romania, and Israel. The finding of the US lowering its child poverty rate was celebrated by news media outlets across the globe.
However, is child poverty really so low now that we don’t have to worry about it? It is necessary to contextualize this alleged success. The reason that the child poverty rate fell was because of the US stimulus packages provided to families during the pandemic. The success of this aid is a sign that investing in families helps children to live healthier, better lives. But there are two major problems associated with getting comfortable that child poverty is going to continue to be so low that we don’t have to worry about it anymore.
Problem one is that Congress has balked in authorizing additional funds to families since the pandemic is supposedly over. Life for millions of US children was tough before COVID and isn’t now as rosy as the report may reflect. While there may be fewer children in severe poverty, this does not negate the fact that millions of children are still poor. The financial boost that kept many children out of poverty during COVID is over, despite proof that investing in programs that serve children and families has improved the health and wellbeing of children and households. To cut aid to families means that there will be a predictable slide into more child poverty.
Problem two concerns how one measures poverty or counts who are poor. I explained this statistical manipulation about how homeless people are counted in my book, Changing the Paradigm of Homelessness; definitions of poverty or homelessness result in counts being made in particular ways that ensures the public only see poverty or homelessness in certain ways.
Matt Bruenig at the People’s Policy Project examined the data portrayed in the New York Times article and concluded that saying that America’s high levels of child poverty no longer exists “is just laughable”. He goes on to state that the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] relative child poverty rate in the US was 21 percent in 2019. By comparison, in 2018, using the exact same measure, Finland’s child poverty rate was 3.5 percent and Denmark’s was 4.9 percent. So a child poverty drop falling from 21% to 5.2% in a three-year period of time would be nothing short of a miracle. The question that Bruenig and other critics ask is — is child poverty really that low? Could it be the result of variables selected, dates of measurement, the consistency of data methodology from one study to another, or other factors?
A poverty epidemic among children in the US has existed for decades, and despite this sunshiny moment in time, child poverty will continue to grow unless there are government policies to protect children’s livelihoods. We may want to believe that things are getting better for us and the nation that we tend to ignore the fact that in the US , the rich continue to get richer while the middle and lower-classes struggle to survive. In 1981, the top 1 percent of adults earned on average 27 times more than the bottom 50 percent of adults; today the top 1 percent earn 81 times more than the combined incomes of the bottom 50 percent. The amount the government spends for welfare to individuals is about $59 billion (3% of the federal budget), but $92 billion for corporation “welfare”. America’s economic systems are not designed to support all families. The US economic system is designed to support the wealthy and it fails both the lower and middle-classes. As the COVID pandemic shows American billionaires got $12 trillion richer during the pandemic, while the majority of families suffered a loss of jobs, incomes, and homes.
At the same time that the fat cats are getting richer, the predictable rise of child poverty is starting us straight in the eye, unless we choose to look the other way. The helpful stimulus checks stopped coming in 2022. Proposals to provide aid for things that make a big difference to households, such as childcare support and reducing student loan debt, have been squashed by many in Congress. Hunger among children is still at crisis levels since the pandemic, as food pantries across the nation will testify. The current cost of food has skyrocketed, making it harder for parents to feed their children. Despite rhetoric of children’s importance, federal policies endorse poverty and its associated outcomes on children, shown in its decision to eliminate free lunch for all children. This cut has occurred during a time when families continue to struggle financially and the 16.7% of children who do not know where their next meal is coming from and the 22 million children who depend upon free lunch for what may be the only meal of their day. SAMHSA, the government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, reports that “Family and child homelessness is a crisis and it is not getting the attention it deserves.” Current data points out that shelter costs have dramatically increased, with mortgage rates doubling, and utility rates of all types going through the roof; my electric bill now is 77% higher than it was last month, and it will stay that way, according to the electric company. Homelessness in children is ‘thriving’, which is not good news. It is clear that government aid reduces child poverty. But current indicators predict that we can expect child hunger, housing distress, and poverty to rise again in the near future.
Education historically has been the sea that could lift all boats. But schools too are underfunded. Instead of acknowledging that schools can’t do their job without governmental support, schools get blamed for failures that are beyond their control. “The sad fact is that the learning gaps opened up by COVID are a small fraction of those that already existed before the pandemic” . America is often hailed as a land of opportunity, a place where all children, no matter their family background, have the chance to succeed. Data measuring how low-income children tend to fare suggest this may be more myth than reality. Fewer than one in 13 children born into poverty in the United States will go on to hold a high-income job in adulthood; the odds are far longer for Black children born into poverty, it’s one in 40. Poverty is associated with race, but educational apartheid is not racial apartheid directly — it is class apartheid. Neighborhood apartheid exists year after year, replicating the status-quo.
Despite COVID being a potential killer even for young children, Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute’s Center for Children and Families found that half of children in the United States (40 million) are now insured through Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), but this protection is likely to expire sometime in 2022. States will have to recheck eligibility for everyone enrolled in Medicaid including children. During this unprecedented event of pandemic threat, they estimate that at least 6.7 million children are likely to lose their Medicaid coverage and are at considerable risk for becoming uninsured. This means that sick children will not be able to get medical care unless their parents can pay for it, which they may not be able to do.
A 2022 Columbia University Center on Poverty and Social Policy study found that 3.7 million more children fell into poverty from December to January (an increase of 41%) after families no longer received expanded child tax credit payments. By all measures, children of color in this country fare even worse, the result of specific policies that misdirect resources away from where they are most needed to ensure the welfare of all children.
As Frame Works research shows, the public lacks an understanding of how most public policy relates to children. The public is so wedded to the notion of American Exceptionalism that it’s hard for them to fathom that there are really so many poor children in our country. Yet there are. And more there will be, unless we make different investment choices. We are teetering on a precipice, with one option being innovative, creative, education , healthcare, and social service systems that are of excellent quality for everyone. Or we can choose to make further investments in classist, racist, gender-biased systems that ferments further individual and socially structured inequality. We get to choose.
So the next time you hear that child poverty in the US is in decline, think again. If you look around, you will see the obvious fact that child poverty is alive and strong. It is here to stay unless we continue to provide not just stimulus monies but long-term financial commitments to children and their families. As Fredrick Douglas is known to have said, it is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men — and better to build a strong democracy instead of trying to fix a broken nation.
