How to end child poverty in america
Child Poverty — Children's Defense Fund
Child PovertyBen Dawson2022-08-03T09:36:09-05:00
The Problem
To succeed, children need quality and healthy homes, generous income and wealth support, quality health care, ample nutritious food, good schools, safe neighborhoods, and access to resources and opportunities that enable them to reach their full potential. Our children are striving, but too often the decks are stacked against them and the basic building blocks for success are out of reach.
Every child deserves to live in a world where they can learn, thrive, and live up to their fullest potential. The only way to do so is to confront our current systems and institutional racism and advance change for all of our communities, especially our Black, Latinx, and indigenous children and families.
About 1 in 7 children—nearly 10.5 million—were poor in 2019. Almost half of these children lived in extreme poverty at less than half the poverty level. Children of color—who make up a majority of all children and our nation’s future—are at greatest risk. Seventy-one percent of poor children were children of color. More than 1 in 4 Black and 1 in 5 Hispanic and Indigenous children were poor compared with 1 in 12 white children. Across all racial and ethnic groups, the youngest children were the poorest. Nearly 1 in 6 children under 6 lived in poverty during their years of greatest brain development.
Poverty and income inequality leave children without reliable access to nutritious food, healthy homes, quality health care, and other resources to support their healthy development and later success.
- More than 1 in 7 children in America experienced food insecurity and did not have enough to eat in 2019.
- Many did not even have a safe and stable place to sleep. More than 1.5 million school-aged children experienced homelessless during the 2017-2018 school year, living in shelters, transitional housing or on the streets.
- Children in poverty were also more likely to be uninsured.
Denying millions of children basic necessities like food, housing and healthcare can have devastating and lasting consequences. Child poverty creates gaps in cognitive skills for young children, jeopardizes children’s health and ability to learn, and fuels an intergenerational cycle of poverty. Child poverty is too costly for our children and nation—and it is neither necessary nor morally defensible.
A baby is born into poverty every minute in America
71 percent of poor children are children of color
4.5 million U.S. children live in extreme poverty on $9 a day per person
Our Vision
We envision an America where we fully invest in our communities, particularly communities of color, so that no child lives in poverty, where racial justice is realized and all children have the opportunities they need to reach their full potential. We believe that we must tear down the systemic and institutional racism and discrimination embedded in our institutions and our policies to fully realize this dream.
As a country, we have the resources to end child poverty now and must create the will to do so. We cannot afford to wait. The future of our children—and our nation—depends on it.
The Solution
We fight to end child poverty and ensure all families have resources they need to thrive and flourish by expanding, improving, and advancing new federal programs and policies that help our communities. Ending child poverty will take a multi-pronged approach. To end child poverty now, we must:
- Ensure Children’s Basic Needs are Met: We must aggressively increase investments in housing assistance through vouchers and affordable construction for families struggling to make ends meet and those experiencing homelessness. rs, so they all can afford a safe and stable home to raise their children. Additionally, we must strengthen Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) to fight for racial justice and help families afford basic necessities like meals, a trip to the laundromat, and diapers.
We must also increase the value of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) monthly benefit, enact universal school meals for all, and greatly expand summer and after school meals b, so children are re healthy and ready to learn. - Enact a robust, permanent child allowance and baby bonds: We must guarantee a minimum income and baby bonds for every child to ensure they have the opportunity to thrive and invest in their life. Regular, meaningful assistance to families will cut poverty deeply, promote racial equity and justice, and serve as a foundation for a more equitable and inclusive social support system that gives children cash now and for a brighter future tomorrow (baby bonds).
- Ensure a living wage and support for families and their children: We must increase wages to at least $15 an hour because people deserve to earn a living with time for a life and caring for their family. That means counting caregiving as work, guaranteeing all workers can meet their own medical needs through comprehensive paid leave, and enacting a national, permanent subsidized jobs program for young adults.
- Ensure more children and youth have the support they need from the start: : To reduce child poverty long term, children also need access to affordable, comprehensive physical and behavioral health care, affordable high-quality early development and learning opportunities, including child care, robust Head Start and early Head Start, high performing schools and colleges, and families and neighborhoods free from violence.
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Ending Child Poverty Now - Overview — Children's Defense Fund
No child should have to worry where her next meal will come from or whether she will have a place to sleep each night in the wealthiest nation on earth. Yet more than 12.8 million children in America—about 1 in 5—live in poverty and face these harsh realities every day. More than 2 in 3 poor children are children of color and our youngest children are our poorest. We are failing our children and our nation.
When we let millions of children grow up poor without basic necessities like food, housing and health care, we deny them equal opportunities to succeed in life and rob our nation of their future contributions. Poverty decreases a child’s chances of graduating from high school and increases her chances of becoming a poor adult. It makes her more likely to suffer illnesses and get caught in the criminal justice system.
Beyond its human costs, child poverty has huge economic costs. Our nation loses about $700 billion a year due to lost productivity and increased health and crime costs stemming from child poverty.
Child poverty is an urgent and preventable crisis. Solutions to child poverty in our nation already exist if we just expand and invest in them. Benefits like nutrition assistance, housing vouchers and tax credits helped lift nearly 7 million children out of poverty in 2017, but millions of children were left behind due to inadequate funding, eligibility restrictions and low wages. We can and must fix these problems to help more children escape poverty now.
In 2015, the Children’s Defense Fund published our groundbreaking report Ending Child Poverty Now which showed, for the first time, how America could immediately lift millions more children out of poverty by simply improving and investing in policies and programs that work. Four years later, we find it unacceptable and unconscionable that our leaders are still debating and our poor children are still waiting.
Millions of children have needlessly suffered in poverty because our nation failed to act. How many more years, child lives and taxpayer dollars will we waste before we end child poverty? How many more studies and reports will it take before our leaders acknowledge that we know what to do and can start right now?
This second edition of Ending Child Poverty Now updates our earlier study and issues another call for an immediate reduction in child poverty. It confirms, once again, our nation can act now to end child poverty for a majority of children and raise family incomes for millions more. By investing an additional 1.4 percent of our federal budget into existing programs and policies, we can cut child poverty at least 57 percent, lift 5.5 million children out of poverty and help 95 percent of all poor children.
Recognizing the urgent need to help more poor and near-poor children today, CDF identified nine policy improvements that could be enacted immediately to increase employment, make work pay and meet children’s basic survival needs for food, housing and child support.
CDF then commissioned the Urban Institute to estimate the child poverty impacts and costs of these policy improvements. According to the Urban Institute, these combined policy improvements could substantially reduce child poverty as measured by the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) which accounts for the impact of government benefits and tax policy on families.
Policy Improvements to Reduce Child Poverty Right Now
Increasing Employment and Making Work Pay More for Adults with Children
- Create transitional jobs for unemployed and underemployed individuals ages 16-64 in families with children.
- Increase the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15.00 by 2024.
- Increase the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for lower-income families with children.
- Make the Child Tax Credit (CTC) fully refundable with additional benefits for families with young children.
- Make child care subsidies available to all eligible families below 150 percent of poverty with no co-pays.
- Make the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) refundable with a higher reimbursement rate.
Meeting Children’s Basic Needs
- Determine Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits based on USDA’s Low-Cost Food Plan for families with children and increase benefits by 31 percent.
- Make housing vouchers available to all households with children below 150 percent of poverty for whom fair market rent exceeds 50 percent of their income.
- Require child support to be fully passed through to families receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF formerly AFDC), fully disregarded for TANF benefits and partially disregarded for SNAP benefits.
Enacted together, these improvements would:
- Cut child poverty at least 57.1 percent, lifting 5.5 million children out of poverty.
- Cut extreme child poverty at least 57.9 percent, lifting 1.3 million children above 50 percent of the poverty line.
- Raise family incomes for 95 percent of all poor children.
- Lift 58.1 percent of poor children under 6 out of poverty.
- Lift 65.4 percent of poor Black children out of poverty.
- Lift 59 percent of poor Hispanic children out of poverty.
- Reduce poverty among single-parent households 59.5 percent.
- Reduce poverty among children in metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas 57 percent.
These improvements would cost $52.3 billion—1.4 percent of federal spending and 0.3 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). This is a bargain our nation—which approved nearly $2 trillion on tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals and corporations in 2017—can easily afford. Every dollar invested in reducing child poverty will return at least seven dollars to our economy.
The bottom line is simple: we must eliminate child poverty and can get started immediately. Children only have one childhood and it is right now. We cannot afford to wait another 3, 5, or 10 years to end child poverty—and this report shows we do not have to.
We have the knowledge and resources. We must now develop the moral and political will to act.
Who Are Our Poor Children and How Poor Are They?
Children are the poorest age group in America.
- A child is born into poverty every 41 seconds in America.
- Nearly 1 in 3 of those living in poverty are children. Over 12.8 million children were poor in 2017.
- Of these children, nearly 5.9 million lived in extreme poverty below half the poverty line.
- Poverty is defined as an annual income below $25,094 for a family of four—$2,091 a month, $483 a week or $69 a day. Extreme poverty is an income below half that level ($12,547).
The youngest children are the poorest during critical years of brain development.
- Nearly 1 in 5 infants, toddlers and preschoolers are poor.
- More than 1 in 3 American Indian/Alaska Native and Black children under 5 are poor.
- Nearly half of all poor children under 5 live in extreme poverty.
Poverty affects all children, but disproportionately children of color.
- More than 2 in 3 poor children are children of color.
- Nearly 1 in 3 American Indian/Alaska Native children and more than 1 in 4 Black and Hispanic children are poor compared with 1 in 9 White children.
- While American Indian/Alaska Native and Black children have the highest poverty rates, Hispanic children comprise the largest number of poor children followed by White children.
Poverty affects children in rural, suburban and urban communities.
- A majority of poor children live outside of major cities—in suburbs, smaller non-metropolitan cities and rural areas.
- 60 percent of poor children live in small cities, suburbs and rural towns.
The majority of poor children live with at least one working family member.
- 2 in 3 poor children in related families live with an adult who works.
- Nearly 1 in 3 live with a family member who works full-time, year-round.
Note: These figures reflect the number of children living below the official poverty line as calculated by the Official Poverty Measure (OPM) based only on cash income.
U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey. 2018. “2017 Annual Social and Economic Supplement,” Tables POV01, POV03, POV13, POV21, POV40, and 3; U.S. Census Bureau. 2018. “2017 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates,” Tables B17020H and B17020B.
Child poverty costs US $1 trillion / +1
Society
A panel of experts from the US National Academy of Sciences published a report on child poverty. According to the authors, annually it costs the country's economy from $800 billion to $1.1 trillion. A report titled "Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty" presented to the US Congress examines various aspects of this problem, as well as recommendations aimed at addressing it.
This is reported by Global Citizen. nine0003 Photo: flickr.com/Glen Zazove
Child poverty is linked to high crime rates, health conditions and low incomes of people who grew up in low-income families. Experts believe that funding programs aimed at reducing poverty among children would help save the government money.
The report notes that there are many other important reasons for eradicating poverty. According to the US Census Bureau, about 20% of children in the country live in poverty, and in states such as Mississippi, this figure reaches almost 30%. If a child grows up in poverty, this leads to serious consequences in the future, which can affect the whole life of a person. nine0003
“A child growing up in a family with an income below the subsistence level performs lower than a child from a more affluent family. This applies to all areas - from physical and mental health to the level of academic performance and success in the labor market. Such a child is more likely to engage in risky behavior and commit crimes,” the authors of the report note.
The stress experienced by children from low-income families can negatively affect brain development, the functioning of the hormonal system, and much more. Poverty has also been linked to long-term health and behavioral problems, low levels of education, and frequent incarceration. Experts draw attention to the fact that people who grew up in poverty often raise their children in the same conditions. The United Nations has called child poverty unfair and a violation of human rights. nine0003
Researchers state that the future of the United States could be more stable if millions of American children did not live in families with incomes below the subsistence level. Lack of funds for families jeopardizes the ability of children to grow up and succeed in adulthood, and this is detrimental not only to them, but to society as a whole.
The report lists several ways to address child poverty. In most cases, the recommendations are aimed at stimulating labor activity and providing vocational training for poor people.
In addition, they propose expanding the social assistance program through the issuance of food stamps and housing vouchers (the housing voucher program helps people with low incomes pay rent. - Note +1). The authors of the report also call for an increase in the minimum wage to $10.25 per hour, as well as an increase in tax breaks for families with children. nine0003
Many of these recommendations are already included in bills initiated by members of Congress. A number of experts advocate more ambitious programs to combat child poverty. These include increased parental leave, free childcare, free lunches at preschools and schools.
Author
Ksenia Bondarenko
Almost half of American children live in poverty, scientists say
https://ria.ru/20170210/1487626007.html
Nearly half of American children live in poverty, scientists say
Almost half of American children live in poverty, scientists say children of primary school age in the United States live in families below the poverty line, most of which cannot provide even the most basic RIA Novosti, 02/10/20170003
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discoveries - RIA Nauka, USA
Discoveries - RIA Nauka, Science, USA
MOSCOW, February 10 - RIA Novosti. Approximately 40% of US infants and primary school children live in families below the poverty line, the majority of which cannot provide for even the most basic needs of a child, say scientists from the National Center for Child Poverty.
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"The fact that there are approximately 300,000 more children living below the poverty line in America today than during the Great Depression is a very disturbing thing. Anxiety, depression and constant stress associated with financial distress leave an indelible mark on children and affect their careers and salaries in adulthood. Politicians need to understand how dysfunctional childhoods play in the future of the country,” said Heather Coball, director of the National Center for Child Poverty. nine0003
In recent years, the number of poor people in the United States, despite the overall growth of the economy, has been steadily and rapidly growing, also due to globalization and the associated loss of medium and high-skill jobs. According to the latest US government estimates, in 2015, about 40 million Americans were below the poverty line, which is about 15% of the total American population, and 40% of American workers are very close to this line, earning less than 30 thousand dollars a year.
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15 December 2016, 10:59
Scientists have found that Santa Claus rarely visits poor children Observations of children in hospitals in Britain have shown that Santa Claus visits obedient and naughty children equally often, but rarely gives gifts to children from disadvantaged areas.
Coball and her colleagues set out to find out if a similar pattern exists among toddlers and early preschoolers. It turned out that this was actually the case, and that in some cases the picture was even worse than among adults. nine0003
According to scientists, over 40% of children live in families below the poverty line and in simply poor families earning less than 24 thousand dollars and less than 48 thousand dollars a year. These include about 5.2 million infants and about 25 million children under the age of three.
According to the center's specialists, the poverty rate among children over the past three years, despite the improvement in the economic situation in the United States, has not fallen, but increased by 1%, reaching record levels since the Great Depression.
