Childhood Poverty
Child Tax Credit
The sharp increase in poverty rates reported recently by the Census Bureau does not reflect the state of the economy, as some irresponsible or misinformed observers casually claim. The United States’ economy is, in fact, strong. The nation’s GDP continues to rise as the unemployment rate has remained below 4 percent for many months – a modern record.
A high proportion of people are working. Wages are rising. Corporate profits are bulging. And inflation has fallen significantly, despite some propagandistic headlines which report that inflation is surging.
But there is one thing that should make Americans alarmed. Despite all of this growth in the economy, poverty rates rose significantly. Further, for children 17 and under, poverty rates soared. More than 12 percent of children live in poverty, which is more than double the 5 percent living in poverty in 2021.
The principal cause is clear.
It’s not the economy. It’s deliberate, insensitive, tragic social policy.
Is America a poor country which fails to protect those living in poverty? That’s ’s how I would put it. More precisely, America is acting like a poor country. But it is actually an insensitive country driven by its cadres of rich tycoons.
Those rich tycoons got huge tax cuts under the Trump administration, tax cuts that created record government budget deficits. But when payouts to poor families with children created a more modest deficit, Republicans ditched the program.
Congress passed a key bipartisan program to reduce child poverty in 2021, which raised cash benefits paid to poor families with children significantly. The policy cut child poverty by half. But it was rescinded just a year later.
“It costs too much,” was the basically Republican claim. It would raise the federal deficit too much. A couple of Democrats – notably Senator Munchin of West Virginia – also claimed it would raise the deficit too much and prove inflationary.
A generation of serious academic research proves that reducing child poverty with government cash is much like intelligent business investment. It makes the economy more productive by raising the cognitive development of children in poverty, who become better and smarter workers, pay more taxes, and commit fewer crimes because they have less need.
Americans can no longer plead ignorance of this firm relationship between reducing child poverty and economic growth. If they do, they only betray their own insensitivity.
Poverty is a problem with a clear solution. Join us on The Invisible Americans Podcast as we explore multiple paths forward. We can lift children out of poverty in this country, and we must.
