The Invisible Americans theme by Bridget St. John

Carol Jenkins

Hello, and thanks so much for joining The Invisible Americans Podcast with Jeff Madrick and Carol Jenkins. We address the travesty of child poverty here.

Jeff Madrick

There are nearly 13 million children living in serious material deprivation in America, and we don't see them. They are our invisible Americans, and we plan to change that.

Carol Jenkins

A couple of words about us. The podcast is based on Jeff's book, Invisible Americans: The Tragic Cost of Child Poverty. He's an economics writer, author of seven and co-author of another four books on the American economy.

Jeff Madrick

Carol is an Emmy-winning journalist, activist, and author. Most recently, president of the ERA Coalition working to amend the constitution to include women.

Carol Jenkins

We are longtime colleagues and friends.

The Invisible Americans theme by Bridget St. John

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Jeff Madrick  

Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Invisible Americans Podcast. Today, as we talk about vulnerable children living in poverty. We address one of the most serious dangers for them, small children getting trapped by traffickers and sold for sex. We talk with Melanie Thompson of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, herself a victim of child trafficking. And we also get an update on efforts to end child poverty from Megan Curran, Policy Director of Columbia University’s esteemed and invaluable Center on Poverty and Social Policy.

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Carol Jenkins  

We begin with Melanie Thompson, profiled recently by New York Times columnist Nick Kristof. He has followed her life story for many years and gave us an update on her current fight against trafficking, working now for a leading anti trafficking organization. She knows the trauma, though, firsthand, kidnapped and trafficked when she was a small child, spending the rest of her young life in and out of unkind and even destructive foster homes. So, Melanie, give us your take on sex trafficking of children living in poverty, or wanting to end child poverty. But we're really tremendously concerned about what happens to children living in poverty, living in foster care, you've experienced some of that. So if you could give us your take on where are we in 2023 with this problem.

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Melanie Thompson  

Personally, it's still a major issue. Children that are living in poverty are twice, if not three times more susceptible to human trafficking, and a plethora of other isms and oppressions. I think that what a lot of people don't understand when it comes to the sex trafficking, specifically of children, is that we are marketed and highly valuable to traffickers and to sex buyers, because we're targeted not only for our vulnerabilities as adults who are also trafficked and exploited, but because of our youth, and because of that young age. 

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Myself going through the foster care system, it just added on another layer of susceptibility. In addition to me coming from a domestic violence household, in addition to me dealing with an alcoholic parent, in addition to me being a black, queer child. All of these different things were already stacked against me. And then when you add a component like foster care, like the juvenile justice system, like child welfare systems, it just added on this extra layer that told traffickers or alluded to traffickers that I was somebody to them worth exploiting, because in their mind, they felt that I had no support system, no love from family, and that I had no other economic resources. 

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When you're a child that has already been—for lack of a better term—displaced, whether physically from family or internally displaced from the family structure. And then traffickers come in and exploit that window, that void, that lack of resource, it becomes very easy for somebody to get caught up in the system of prostitution and trafficking. And for many years, most of the children that were sexually exploited, unfortunately continue on through the system or prostitution as an adult, because they've been groomed from so young that they see prostitution as a viable job option for themselves. So it is very imperative that we focus on children as well and more specifically, children who are impacted by marginalization and poverty because we have twice as more of a vulnerable marker to traffickers.

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Jeff Madrick  

So you experienced trafficking yourself. 

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Melanie Thompson 

Yes. 

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Jeff Madrick  

Describe how that began. Were you continuously, persistently afraid?

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Melanie Thompson  

Absolutely. I was trafficked in New York City when I was 12 years old. I was on my way home from a movie theater with my two girl friends in sixth grade. We ran into these two boys that we knew that were a little older than us, but had graduated from our middle school. The community was very small, where I grew up, and going back to their house—or what we thought was their house at the time—started off very innocently. It was a lot of spin the bottle and regular preteen and teenage games. And that very quickly turned into me being drunk and blacked out. My two girl friends being gone, me being raped by one of the younger boys then the younger boy, bringing back an older man who told me that I wasn't going anywhere. I was very very much afraid and fearful, not just for my life, and whether or not I was going to live or die, but also scared because I didn't know where I was, scared because I didn't know where my mother was, scared of consequences. I didn't know if I'd be in trouble for what was happening to me. I really couldn't process everything that I was feeling at that time. And by the time you turned 12 and 13, without any kind of parental supervision, anybody that you know, it was a very fearful time. 

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I was often exploited, I was locked in an abandoned house when he took me and he would bring these men to this closet to do whatever they wanted to do with me. And that was a very scary thing. But I think after days of dealing with that kind of consistent and repetitive abuse, I think at some point I just became numb to it all. You try to run, you try to escape, you try to deal with the immediate fight mode, and then eventually you get into a fawn or freeze mode. I think that's what happened to me after a few days. 

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Jeff Madrick 

How did you escape? 

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Melanie Thompson 

Unfortunately, it wasn't a beautiful fairy tale. I wasn't able to just get out and be returned home to my family. I ended up getting arrested by two detectives who brought me to court and from that point on, I ended up in the foster care system. So needless to say, I have not lived with my biological family since the time I turned 13 years old. I've been in the foster care system ever since.

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Carol Jenkins  

We've had a guest here who grew up in foster care herself and talked about the horrors of it. Apparently, the system just does not work. Talk to us about what happens when you go into foster care, how many families were you with once you went into the foster care system.

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Melanie Thompson  

So when I first got arrested, I was sent to three facilities. First, in New York City. Specifically, you go through the ACS building, the precincts, if you qualify, you can end up in mental hospitals, psych wards. So I went through three different facilities, many of which were residential treatment facilities for a couple of years. My first foster family didn't come until I was turning 16, almost 16. I thought that my first foster family would be the family that I would stay with until I aged out of care. And for me, that would have been 21 years old. But my first foster family re-exploited me and put me back into the system of prostitution as a teenager. So from that point, once I was removed from that household, I went to nine other foster families before I eventually started dorming at college. 

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The foster care system in general has many flaws and many gaps in services. I won't say that it is the absolute most horrid thing I've ever endured. I've endured a lot of negative things in the system. I do think that it needs a big reform, I think that there needs to be a lot of up ending and starting over when it comes to the system. Unfortunately, although there are some great families and great parents who truly want to do great work and really take in a child or person in their family as their own, the reality is that the ratio of those parents compared to the amount of foster families that see this as a side hustle to gain an additional form of income is just slim to none. And unfortunately, we as teenagers—specifically teenagers and children over the age of eight nine—we end up being majority of the people who most foster families don't want. 

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What I find is that younger children between newborn age and about six or seven years old are the most sought after when it comes to foster care because most families want a younger child so that they can adapt them to their family values and cultures and truly have that adoption experience. Once you hit adolescent age and preteen age, most people don't want you. So what you find is that in going back to your first question about susceptibility, what you find is that teenagers and pre teenagers in the foster care system are twice as likely to run away, become homeless and be sought after by traffickers. Because of the fact that most families don't want to take a teenager in their home, they feel that teenagers are more problematic. They feel that teenagers have this idea of you're not my mom, you're not my dad. And they find that that's going to cause problems for them in the family. 

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What you end up finding is most of us being bounced around from house to house, because there's no permanent stability. There's a lot of families that only open their homes for respite and short term stays, they don't want to take us long term. And you find a lot of us become even more homeless than we already are because of that. The foster care system is great in emergency situations, but most of the time, we end up experiencing a lot more harm in the system than good.

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Jeff Madrick  

How is the US system compared to systems in other wealthy countries, probably mostly Western Europe, to minimize human trafficking?

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Melanie Thompson  

Human trafficking is a global issue. And at least in all the countries that I've been in—it exists. The US legally has a different framework compared to some of these other countries, specifically in Europe. So the system of prostitution and child trafficking looks a little bit different. I do think that the United States in the last 10 years has definitely improved in the way that we address human trafficking as a whole federally. I will say that some of the the numbers of those in foster care who are traffic hasn't really gone up or down. We're still facing those harsh realities. But I will say that in some of the other countries, when we think about child trafficking, it's usually on the extreme end that we think of it's the smuggling, it's the kidnapping off of the street and being put into a white van. Here in the US, especially in metropolitan cities, like New York and Chicago and Miami. It's still occurring. And it looks a little different than it does in some of the other countries where there are structures in place to try to prevent child trafficking. So I do think that we've made some strides. But we have a long way to go here.

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Carol Jenkins  

Melanie, how do we stop this? When we talk about trafficking, there's several things, there’s sex trafficking, there's labor trafficking, and then there's the horrific organ trafficking. There are so many ways and children are susceptible in all of those ways. How do we resolve this issue? Your organization has been working on it for some time, doing a terrific job. What do you see,as the answer? We want to stop that kid from feeling that becoming a sex worker is the solution to their livelihood when they're 10, 11, 12 years old.

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Melanie Thompson  

I love that you brought that up because children can't be sex workers. The idea of this notion of a sex worker is truly ridiculous. And I can spend an entire another interview talking about language alone. But there's a couple of approaches that we can take. On the legal side of things. I think, overall, we need to shift our focus from the children and the behaviors that the children are displaying to the demand for paid sex and the demand for buying children and sexual access to children's bodies, or the organs of children or any of that. 

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We as a society have focused a lot on, what are the kids doing? Is the teenager a troubled teenager? Is the child a runaway? Are they homeless? What's wrong in the child's life, and although analyzing the whole person is necessary, we have not started a societal and cultural conversation around the buyers and the demand and the traffickers. Without the demand for us, there would be no us. There would be no me being exploited and kidnapped at 12 years old. Once we focus on why there are men that are buying, why there are traffickers that are gaining profit and why they want to exploit and we remove them off of the street, then there would be less fear for us to go to school or go outside or or engage in extra extracurricular activities. 

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Legally, we need to change our legislation to something known as the equality model. Right now we have it in all 50 states is full criminalization when it comes to this issue. I think we need to change that to the equality model which arrests but demands for paid sex buyers, traffickers, brothel owners, etc. But decriminalizes the children, the teenagers and the people like me who were exploited. So I think we need to take that legal approach. And then separate from the legalities of things. I think that one thing that we can do as a society to help prevent this is really public awareness and education raising. A lot of times people still to this day don't recognize that sex trafficking, organ trafficking, labor trafficking of children happens in this country. And they believe that child trafficking only happens in places like India and China, so far away from here. The reality is that most people don't know what happens here because they don't know what to look for. And they don't know what it looks like because a metropolitan country like this, we traffickers had to change the way that they sell children and market them, speaking with survivors who have gone through that, sitting in seminars and trainings to learn more about the risk factors, learning more about what the warning signs are, if your child has been in contact with the trafficker—

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Carol Jenkins  

That right there, Melanie, what are the warning signs?

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Melanie Thompson  

Oh, there's so many, there are different things that you can look for, usually in smaller children. Usually in like primary school, elementary school aged children, you want to look for behavioral changes. Now, I do want to preface this and say that some of these warning signs could look like other things as well could look like domestic violence or fight with a friend. But I always say it's better to look for all the signs than to just chalk it up to something else. So when smaller children usually might see behavioral changes, they're not paying attention in class as much. They look sad, you obviously want to look for things like bruises if that's necessary. And even if that doesn't end up being – if you do investigate that, even if it doesn't end up being trafficking, you will find that it's a product of something could be [INAUDIBLE] in the home, starvation, whatever have you. Usually in middle school aged children, you usually will look for things like excessive amounts of cash, flashier clothing, isolation from friends, just overall behavioral changes that kind of raise red flags.

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Oftentimes, in middle school aged children, when you see things like that, you notice that they're not speaking to their classmates that they usually speak to or hang out with, you notice a lot of absenteeism in their classes, especially for students who usually don't have bad attendance records. When you see them coming in with more name brand things, or they're a little bit more flashier than usual. Usually, that means there has been an increase in some kind of gift giving or money, which is something that traffickers use as a grooming tactic to maintain the relationship with the middle school aged child. With younger children, it usually looks like not making eye contact, being a little bit more mute or silent and not engaging with their teachers or classmates. So even though these are very common indicators of any form of abuse, it's usually something that needs to be reported. So those are just a couple of things that I can throw off off the top of my head that really can help parents and teachers and guardians and guidance counselors and whatever have you look out for some of those things, and it will help them to at least be aware that something negative is going on.

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Jeff Madrick  

How did you make it to college out of this environment and become so articulate?

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Melanie Thompson  

Thank you. It took a lot of personal will in therapy. There were many times that I didn't think I was going to ever make it through school. And I have not had the upbringing of most average children. But separate from that, the statistics not only for those who have gone through sex trafficking or any kind of human trafficking, but specifically those who have gone through the foster care system, the educational and academic statistics for our graduation rates are extremely low. And for me, I've went through five different high schools,  three different colleges before I graduated, and for me, it was really just about remembering where I came from, at home, what I went through when I was taken, and really just trying to remember who I wanted to be. And it took a lot of years before I can get to a place of stability to be able to power through any kind of PTSD symptoms or any kind of my depression or mental health disorders. But after years of finding a support system, finding people you can rely on, finding that good social worker and your foster care agency, those kinds of things really do make a difference in how you continue to show up for yourself every day.

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Carol Jenkins  

Well, you certainly are succeeding. I think the percentage is at 3% of children who are trafficked, who go through the foster that actually complete a college education actually make it out. What are your hopes and dreams? I know that you're doing such good work at the organization. Really powerful, international as well as here in the United States. Where do you see yourself in 5-10 years?

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Melanie Thompson  

I actually want to open a nonprofit organization for those who have been sexually exploited, and have a history with the child welfare system or juvenile justice system in any way, and I want to create an alternative to incarceration program for them.

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Carol Jenkins  

Wow, that would be absolutely essential and would be terrific. We're wishing you so much that you were able to do that on your own. I think that any of the kids who would go through it would be very fortunate to at last find you and what you have to offer. Thank you, Melanie, for being with us today.

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Jeff Madrick  

We wish you great luck with that.

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Melanie Thompson  

Thank you so much.

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The Invisible Americans theme by Bridget St. John

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Carol Jenkins  

The Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University is one of the leading research institutions on the subject of child poverty.

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Jeff Madrick  

Megan, current director of policy there, concentrates on poverty reduction in all of its forms. Here, she gives updates on the most recent efforts, including the 2021 expanded Child Tax Credit.

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Carol Jenkins  

Megan, thanks so much for being with us today. We're so impressed by the work, and Jeff knows your work intimately and the center. Thanks for being with us today.

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Jeff Madrick  

I was impressed that you did another reading of how much of the Child Tax Credit, the cash paid to poor families of children is spent on the needs of kids. Because that seemed to be the obstacle presented to the Senate for ending the program. What do parents spend? And where do they spend it from this child allowance?

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Megan Curran  

That’s a great question because obviously one of the first things that everyone is curious about is, there's all this new money going to households, especially those who didn't receive any of it before, and then some households who did receive some of it were receiving more because the 2021 expansion made three really important changes from what the Child Tax Credit has traditionally looked like in the US. It increased benefit levels. It said you can now be eligible for up to $3,000 per child, but actually even more. A bump if you have a young child, because we know that getting money into kids in early childhood is really important. 

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It included about the 1/3 of children who were historically left out of that credit, and those would be kids, and families with more modest levels of earnings, or in families who their parents for some reason, maybe disability or other sorts of constraints may not be able to work much at all. And it also actually transitioned from paying this out once a year at tax time to actually regular installments. So increments of say $250 or $300 per child per month, which actually was a game changer in terms of how families are able to think about this money as part of their household budgeting needs. 

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A lot of the studies right off the bat said, Okay, well, how are families actually using this money that they're now receiving. And what we saw, basically, from the time that the very first payment went out, and researchers across the country were looking at this in all sorts of different ways. And everyone basically came to the same conclusion, which is that families are spending this on household basic needs, first and foremost, and things related to kids. So child related expenditures in general, and especially child related sort of investments, what we can think of in terms of, you know, enrichment activities, education related things. So, I'll talk a bit more about what I mean by both of those categories. So you need food, you need shelter, and you need clothing. And that's exactly what families were spending this money on the number one item across the country, every single state was food. After that families were using it on their regular bills, rent, mortgage, utilities, things like that, and then kids' clothing.

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These new payments were having a causal impact on how families were making decisions, and how they were going to spend money. So we saw not just that the money was being spent on child related services, like education, tutoring, things like that. But we actually saw that families were spending more in these bucket areas. So that's a really important finding, too, because it's not just saying that this money was using to plug gaps and household budgets, which it was for many families, and that's really important. It actually was driving families to actually say, you know what, we wish that we could spend more on this and now that we have the resources we're actually going to. What I would say is that actually, this might be a new finding of things for folks who haven't really heard of these payments in the past but for researchers who have looked at how countries have been doing this around the world. This is actually exactly lines up with how families around the world spend child related benefits. They spend it on their kids, and they spend it for the sort of good of their children.

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Jeff Madrick  

What does the opposition say when they are presented with this evidence? What do they say to implore people not to give families too much money because they were wasted?

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Megan Curran  

You know, there's a couple of different answers to that but the first one is that the evidence actually bears out exactly what happened from a whole range of sources. We had surveys that were being put up by the Census Department all throughout the pandemic, the Census Household Pulse Survey, which was trying to get a new way of actually reporting out regularly exactly how families were faring. It was a dynamic survey. So they would add questions as policies changed, to be able to capture the impact of say, changes in food assistance during the pandemic, expansion to unemployment benefits, or the loss of those as they expired. And they included specific questions around the child tax credit and things like that, to try and capture how families were thinking of it and using this money. 

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We got a lot of self reported information from families that they were using this money on basic needs and things like that. But you know, some folks are not always necessarily convinced by self reported survey data. It turns out that there was actually a whole host of other evidence to sort of backup exactly that families were sort of putting the money where their mouth is, particularly because they were using a lot of it on food. They were reporting what they were actually doing, and they were telling the truth, because we had totally different information from places like the JPMorgan Chase Institute, which actually was using sort of anonymized data on their checking account holders and sort of debit and credit card users and things like that. And you could actually see—this is not folks self reporting, this is actually from checking account balance data and transaction data, seeing how much money families had over these courses. And we saw that particularly low income families with children who would have historically had much lower sort of checking account balances during the period when the monthly Child Tax Credit payments were coming in: significant boost to these checking account balances. 

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We also then saw from other surveys who used not just, you know, JP Morgan, sort of banking data, but a whole host of again, anonymized credit card data. There was sort of MasterCard information and debit card data, and also actually information from basically locational data from cell phones to see where families were actually expending time physically. And we saw increases in basically child related spending, and the location data in terms of child related sort of areas. So we saw families actually physically being sort of near childcare centers, education centers, stores that sells children's clothing, things like that. We had some of that information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, again, coming out with information that shows exactly what families were spending it on in terms of expenditure information. And when you kind of piece it all together, and you actually look at indicators of outcomes, and that families actually their food insecurity— which is basically a measure of how hungry families are—is going down, poverty is going down, the percent of families falling behind on their bills is going down, arrears and things like that is going down. To be extreme but frank, the use of blood plasma donation banks, which sometimes lower income families would actually donate plasma and things like that for payment to be able to pay bills, those donations were actually going down. 

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All of these indicators from a whole range of sources that are well beyond just what families say they're spending the money on, all of it actually pointed to the same things that families were using this to basically make sure that their kids were fed, that they could keep the roof over their head, but also that they could actually invest in their kids features in terms of school, tutoring, it be health related needs, all that kind of stuff. It's hard to argue against it. Folks still may want to, but it's a pretty airtight case when you actually look at the actual wealth of information that's out there.

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Carol Jenkins  

Megan, thanks for all of that. It's fascinating, especially the cell phone tracking, which is a totally new all together separate show we'd love to talk with you about. The fact that you could tell where people were and what they were doing with their time and therefore, that things were increased. And in fact, some of the research that the Senate has done has shown that since the Child Tax Credit has ended, the mental health of the parents has deteriorated. Talk a little bit about that. So we're in the absence of the support where so many good things happened, people were then again thrown back into arrears into debt into worry and stress.

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Megan Curran  

Researchers are trying to get a handle on not just the sort of more straightforward indicators of well being, which is income poverty, are you above or below a certain amount of income threshold. Food insecurity, are you reporting that you are able to pay for the amount of groceries that your family needs or not. Those things are a little more straightforward than sometimes trying to capture things like stress and mental health and things like that. There was, of course, a couple of different conflicting things happening at the same time, and that of course, families are actually getting this new influx of money, which is really helpful, and they're able to use it to pay their bills. But at the same time, the reason this money was introduced when it was—even though there's a case for it to actually be in place permanently—was because we were in the midst of a huge crisis. 

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It was extremely stressful in general for families, and then there was the extra component of these payments, were only instituted on a temporary basis. Families were receiving these monthly payments for six months. But then there was this cliff, exactly as you said, Carol, that all of a sudden, the payments went away. Again, all of those things can sometimes be hard to tease out exactly how that makes a parent feel. And so that's why you see some studies say, oh, you know, mental health for adults was positively impacted during it. Other studies saw more of a neutral effect, and that you didn't actually see positive or negative, and if anything that actually maybe indicates it potentially was still doing a really good thing, because if you remember, 2021, we probably all want to block it out in terms of, we're still getting new waves of the COVID-19 variants. And it was a really stressful time. So for actually there to be a sort of neutral effect probably meant that the payments were working overtime to just have families feel okay. 

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Unfortunately, we did see a cliff happen at the end of 2021 into the early stages of 2022. Because these monthly payments, the last one arrived in families bank accounts in mid December 2021 coming into January, which is usually a hard time sort of financially. It’s after the holidays. If folks have seasonal work, that might be sort of dropping off a bit at the start of the year. We saw a huge cliff. Family bank accounts – again, from that anonymized banking data, family bank accounts took a hit, food insecurity. So again your ability to make sure that your family has enough food for their needs, took a big hit. 

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We saw families reporting much more sort of increased incidences of going hungry, or things like that. We saw from the census reports that folks were falling behind on their expenses, again, debt was increasing, arrears were beginning to increase again, things like that. And we saw poverty – Because the Columbia Center on Poverty and Social Policy, that's one of our big focuses, the child tax credit payments were keeping poverty at a historic low the second half of 2021. And basically, just in that one month, we saw actually close to 4 million more children in poverty in January 2022, than they had been a month prior. And that was directly related to the loss of these child tax credit payments. So for a single policy was actually doing a shocking amount of good in the world. You saw that while it was in place, but I think one of actually the most stark glimpses that you saw as to all of the impact it was having was actually when they went away.

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Jeff Madrick  

What has to be done to get the Senate to reinstate the Child Tax Credit? I know, we all felt it was an extraordinary victory when it was passed. And then the letdown—at least for me, and I think lots of others—was significant when they did away with it. What do we have to do? Or is it futile to try?

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Megan Curran  

I think this is a policy that's worth fighting for and it would really be a transformational policy for the generations moving forward. So this is something that is extremely well worth fighting for. And it's something worth you know, if we have to play the long game, that's something that is worth doing. There are of course huge frustrations and just sort of disappointment from folks who study this, and folks who work really hard in and outside of Congress, because there are huge champions in terms of policymakers who are in office at the moment. It can be hard because terms like evidence-based policymaking get sort of tossed around quite a lot because you think that okay, that would be the gold standard in terms of how we want to make policy. In this country, we want to do it based on what we know works, and what we know is sort of tried and tested and true, from rigorous research and in a strong evidence base.

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I think what is clear with the Child Tax Credit here, the evidence from the expansion, is that this actually has one of the most well developed and most rigorous evidence basis that has been developed around a single policy in a short amount of time. So it's really staggeringly impressive in that respect. And we hope that this evidence will continue to sort of stand on its own and make the case moving forward.

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Carol Jenkins  

You mentioned the long game. I know that a lot of your research is on the birth grants and child allowance and looking at the United States versus other countries, Canada, Europe, and give us your sense of where we are on that. The long game, I think, going to the Senate and going to the house as we know it now, looking for a birth grant for every single child that's born looks like a really steep challenge. What are you seeing?

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Megan Curran  

I think one of the most probably heartening things to see in terms of the forefront of where this policy could go in the US, is actually the huge explosion of child tax credits that have been created just in the last year or so, maybe a year to 18 months at the state level across the US. So before the pandemic we had, I think it was something like two State Child Tax Credit, things like the Earned Income Tax Credit has been popular for states to use as top ups. But the child tax credit at the state level hadn't really caught on. Before COVID-19, we had two states with child tax credits. As of the middle of this year, as of the summer of 2023, I think we had about 14 states had passed permanent state child tax credits. And there's another 10 or 11 states that actually have active proposals before their legislatures at the moment. So that's actually gets us up to about half the country, if not a little bit more, who either have some now or are really actively trying to consider it. 

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Again, in terms of the amount of time period that we're talking about just in the last two years that that's happened. That is huge. That's a huge groundswell. And it shows that where there are legislative opportunities, folks are taking it and running with it. The long game may not be that long at the federal level, but it's just unpredictable, you never really know when sort of policy windows of opportunity open. Also, the huge influx of State Child Tax Credit proposals across the country, within the US, actually mirrors exactly what has happened internationally for decades now. And basically, since World War II, we've seen a huge amount of particularly high income countries that would have comparable types of economies and policy frameworks that the US does, they've invested in this as sort of a core policy within their tax and benefit system. In most cases, countries have tended to only expand or enhance their child benefits across countries over time, and especially in the last, like 10 or 20 years. So the US has been a huge laggard in this. And I think that we showed in 2021, that not only can we do this, but we can do it extremely well. It’s heartening that states are running with it. And we hope that obviously, the federal government will consider it again in the not too distant future.

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Carol Jenkins  

Your assessment of where we would stand if we changed from a tax credit to a birth grant and a child allowance for every child born in this country, as steep as that may seem.

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Megan Curran  

Things like a child allowance or a child benefit can sometimes be sort of a catch-all term for basically a type of policy where the government essentially is delivering payments to families to support the costs of raising children, but they usually share a set of criteria. So it's usually a cash benefit made for flexible use. It's usually available to families, starting with those at the bottom of the income distribution, those at the very lowest incomes and then either potentially phasing out for higher income families, or they’re universal, that can be an optional approach. They're usually available, regardless of what the type of job a family has, or things like that, that's not a disqualifying thing. And they're delivered regularly, either weekly, or monthly, or every two months or so, so that families can again, build it into their budgets. 

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The reason why our child tax credit in the US has historically not been able to really fall into that category is because we kind of did things a bit upside down on most of those buckets. Because exactly as you said, ours is a tax credit. Not all of our child tax credit can be thought of as cash benefit to families, because what it does first and foremost is it reduces your tax bill. If there happens to be some leftover in the credit amount when your tax liability is eliminated. Again, depending on your income, you can potentially get some as a refund. But we actually exclude the families with the lowest incomes rather than including them. And so we have a sort of upside down eligibility formula where families with incomes up to $400,000 could get the full credit. But actually families with less than $50,000 either get part of it or none of it. And we also delivered once a year at tax time, which again, families are happy for a sort of windfall at any point in the year. But that's not something that you can then take into account and sort of adjust how you would think about the amount of rent you're able to pay or build it into your food budgets or cover tutoring or childcare or something like that. You can't do it when it's only coming once a year. 

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In 2021, we actually fixed those things. And we kind of made our policy align with what a child allowance or a child benefit looks like in many countries. We’re back in the same thing where we can't really count our child tax credit as that type of policy because it doesn't meet all of the sort of really just central components of how you can actually best help families. You can best help families by actually supporting them regularly, making it available to most or all children, and giving them cash so that they can actually decide like what actually fits their family's needs best, rather than a sort of prescriptive thing of saying, well, you can only have this amount and you can only spend it here, here or here.

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Carol Jenkins  

Well, it's clear to us that we would love to have you back to come talk a little bit about that. We believe in cash. Thank you so much, Megan. You’ve been very very helpful for bringing us up to date on the child tax credit and all things child poverty.

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Jeff Madrick  

Megan, most heartening to me is how much of the academic community and the policymaking community, I suppose, has moved to see cash as the most important and productive benefit used to be very much the opposite 20 and 30 years ago, so thank you and your team for that because you guys contribute a lot to that idea. Thanks for joining us.

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Megan Curran  

Thank you so much, and thanks for spotlighting this issue.

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The Invisible Americans theme by Bridget St. John

Jeff Madrick

History will judge the nation's decency in various ways, one of them will surely be the well-being of all its children. American neglect of its poor children is both inexplicable and deplorable. By basic measures, it has the highest child poverty rate among rich nations in the world. A generation of careful academic research has shown how damaging this has been to children's cognition, health, nutrition, and future wages. In 2021, Congress and the president adopted an enlightened program that expanded the Child Tax Credit and made it available to almost all children no matter their race, ethnicity, or how little their parents earned. The results were stunning, cutting the poverty rate by half. But Congress refused to renew the program. In coming months, this podcast will examine the future of the Child Tax Credit and other key policies to protect children from the destructiveness of poverty. We are dedicated to restoring a bright and optimistic future for all children in this land long celebrated for equal opportunity.

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Carol Jenkins  

Thanks so much for joining us on the Invisible Americans Podcast available wherever you get your podcasts, but we urge you to visit our website for transcripts, show notes, research and additional information about our guests and their work. That's www.theinvisibleamericans.com. Please follow us on social media and our new YouTube channel. And our blog posts are up on Medium as well as our website. That's www.theinvisibleamericans.com. Jeff and I will see you the next time.

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