Episode 301: Kids Are Hungry, Working and Not Getting Credit

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:
And 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:
And we are longtime colleagues and friends. No Kid Hungry is a national organization working to end child hunger in this country and around the world. They are great connectors of resources from those who have the food to children who don't. Jeff and I had the pleasure of talking with Rachel Sabella, director of New York No Child Hungry, about their survey that indicates that even families in the $50,000 to $100,000 income range are having trouble in the grocery store. Rachel, thank you so much for being with us today, and thanks so much for the work of No Kid Hungry. Really terrific, necessary assistance to our children. Talk to us a little bit about this recent poll. I know that you periodically check on how people are feeling about food insecurity, and this year was a surprise.

‍

Rachel Sabella:
Thank you, Carol and Jeff, for having me on today. I'm really excited to get the opportunity to talk with you, share about No Kid Hungry's work, and really what the poll findings have told us. This was the third year that No Kid Hungry has engaged in a poll of New Yorkers, and what we found was astounding. We really saw, we talked so much about this affordability crisis. It's in the media. We hear elected officials talking about it. A lot of times it's in terms of rent. But what this poll really showed us is it's hitting New Yorkers hard in the grocery store. The cost of groceries is rising. We all see it each and every day. Biggest, most startling findings we found was 85 percent of New Yorkers said that their salary is not rising as quickly as grocery prices. So that means when they go to the grocery store, they have to make hard choices.

‍

Carol Jenkins:
And this is the middle class is actually feeling this now.

‍

Rachel Sabella:
This is hitting both low-income New Yorkers and middle-class New Yorkers. I think oftentimes we think about hunger or food insecurity or these challenges just in terms of low-income individuals, but this challenge is being felt. I spoke with someone the other day, and they said they went to the grocery store, they tried to purchase raspberries, and they had to put them back because of what the cost was, and they just couldn't fit it within their budget.

‍

Jeff Madrick:
Is anybody blaming, are these people you talk to on say the shopping cart line, do they blame business, retail? Do they think somebody is trying to make money on them more than usual?

‍

Rachel Sabella:
I haven't heard that from people. I think folks are seeing costs rising. I do think why it's hitting, though, some of the most low-income individuals as well is because some government programs that had been designed to help them put food on the table have either ended or funds have been lowered, and it's making that harder for them.

‍

Jeff Madrick:
Doesn't that come up as a criticism? Even Joe Biden, I think, talked about it.

‍

Rachel Sabella:
It may be discussed in some circles. I think our focus at No Kid Hungry is really talking about this, getting the word out, and then determining what can we do to help others and draw attention to it. I think about what some people told us is they go to the grocery store, they pick out what they think their families need, the proteins, the fruits and vegetables, And then when they get to that counter, they are taking those items out and they're putting in the rice, the filler items that are cheaper. And I think in some ways they're focused just on is their family getting the nutrition they need.

‍

Carol Jenkins:
You begin to think that people are eating less healthily because of this.

‍

Rachel Sabella:
That's absolutely one of the biggest findings and, you know, takeaways from this, because they're not able to afford the groceries. Seventy-nine percent of New Yorkers surveyed in this said it had become harder to afford groceries over the past year. That's the highest we have found in the last three years. So, they're not getting the fish. They're not getting the meats. They're not getting the broccoli and the apples. Instead, they're looking at, okay, is it the rice that we can do? Is it the potatoes? What is on sale and not the protein? And we know when kids especially have that regular access to nutrition, they're growing up stronger, they're able to pay attention in school, they have less long-term health challenges. So, we really want to make sure people are paying attention and looking for solutions to this challenge.

‍

Carol Jenkins:
Rachel, if you could give us the history and the mission of No Kid Hungry so we understand the full scope of the work that you do.

‍

Rachel Sabella:
So No Kid Hungry New York is a campaign of Share Our Strength. We're a national organization working to end childhood hunger and poverty and bringing together different stakeholders to expand programs, draw attention to issues, and help find solutions. I have the honor and privilege of representing the No Kid Hungry campaign on the ground in New York. If my accent doesn't give me away, I am a lifelong New Yorker, so this work is very personal to me. And we do a lot of different things because we firmly believe it's not a one-size-fits-all solution to ending childhood hunger and poverty. 

But what are programs that we can look at? How are we making sure that people are utilizing federal safety net programs that exist? So, we'll work with school districts, for example, and make sure they're implementing breakfast programs. So, when children are dropped off, it's really easy to grab that meal, take it in the classroom. If they're late, they still have access to that meal. We want to make sure families know about benefits they may be eligible for. So, maybe it's the SNAP program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as Food Stamps. Obviously, I know something that you've talked so much about, the Child Tax Credit. What other benefits and resources out there are we protecting those programs, strengthening those programs, and making sure people are enrolling and using it to support their family?

‍

Jeff Madrick:
Well, it sounds like great work to me.

‍

Rachel Sabella:
Thank you. It keeps us busy.

‍

Jeff Madrick:
What's not working?

‍

Rachel Sabella:
I think what has been a real challenge for us, the expiration of pandemic-era programs. So, number one, the SNAP program had an emergency allotment added to it. That ended last year. So, for many families, they lost about an average of $90 per month that they could put towards groceries. Obviously, the expanded child tax credit, that was a game changer. And I think one of the reasons we are seeing such an increase now in hunger, in people facing challenges in the grocery store, is because those programs ended. There also were some creative flexibilities offered during that time. So, for example, there's a summer meals program where kids can go pick up a meal, have a meal at a park, at a school building, at different designated places. 

And the pandemic era changes allowed them to take those meals home or be able to take a few days worth. And we know for working families, which many facing food insecurity are, they can't get back to those sites each and every day in the window that they're opened. And that was, you know, I hate to use the term silver lining because we went through so much during COVID, but seeing how those things worked and helped families, we want them to be nationwide now. Some of those flexibilities are available in rural communities. We're really excited to implement it, but we want to see it everywhere.

‍

Carol Jenkins:
And now some states, however, we see the headlines where governors of states are refusing lunch money, summer program money for kids. I mean, that must drive you crazy to see when you see those headlines.

‍

Rachel Sabella:
What I always think about is the issue of hunger isn't political. And one of the things that I found hopeful in our survey was that more than 90% of New Yorkers said that solving child's hunger is not political. It's a bipartisan issue. So we are working really hard with legislators, with governors, with members of Congress, with mayors across the country on both sides of the aisle to implement the program. And we are seeing some states who maybe there's misconceptions about programs, but we're not giving up on them either. And I think that's something we're so proud of here that we're going to continue to fight and to make sure every eligible child has access to nutritious meals.

‍

Carol Jenkins:
How do you think the state is doing? How do you think the city is doing in terms of feeding its kids?

‍

Rachel Sabella:
I think we've taken great strides in New York, both at the state and the city level to feed children. I think there's always improvements. So, in the last few years in New York State, we've expanded access to flexible breakfast programs to make it easier for those grab-and-go programs. We eliminated the reduced-price meal option. Last year, the state budget put in funds so that now 88 percent of kids across New York State get a no-cost breakfast and no-cost lunch. There's still steps we can take to do that. We want to get to 100%. I'm really thrilled that New York opted into the summer EBT program. 

So, that's a new grocery benefit this summer for eligible families that's going to allow them dignity and choice. And they're going to be able to get the food that their children want, then they won't have to miss those meals. and reinvest those dollars in local communities, we're looking at about $200 million in federal benefits going to eligible families this summer in New York State, which is really going to be a game changer. You know, I would say in New York City, we've done a lot and we have a lot of growth to do. We're in the middle of our budget process right now and there are some challenges around the school meals budget. We want to make sure that the funding is there and that kids are getting the nutritious items that they want to eat. 

Earlier this year, participation went up 9%. When you think about that in the largest school district in the nation, that's a lot more kids eating each day. So, we want to see those investments continue. I really want to see more funding and resources put into program awareness. because as much as we can put ads out there, talk to people, get the word out, there's still so many people that don't realize that they may be eligible for SNAP or with the new summer EBT benefit or where to find a summer meals program. So how can we invest funds but also Time and energy. Is it more flyers? Is it elected officials pushing information out? Is it training school staff? I think there's a lot of ways to do it. And the more noise we can make, the more families will benefit from these programs.

‍

Jeff Madrick:
It sure sounds like a lot of uphill as well as downhill.

‍

Rachel Sabella:
A mentor of mine once said in this space, I hope I'm out of a job in 20 years because I hope that this hunger crisis has been solved. And I have been in this field for 10 years. There's still so much more that we need to do. I wish I would be out of a job in 10 years working on hunger programs. I think it's going to take longer than that. I think the affordability crisis, and especially we're seeing how it all intersects. If somebody, you know, I often say that hunger hides in plain sight. People will say to me, well, they have a house. How are they hungry? Well, their rent just went up. Our Con Edison bills all went up and they're paying for transportation to get to work. Those things can't change or they lose their house. What can they play with? It's the money for food. So we need to get all of those under control. We need job training programs. People have resources. And then I'll be out of a job. And then we'll know that this hunger crisis has been addressed. Good for you.

‍

Carol Jenkins:
Thank you so much, Rachel. Thank you for the poll. Thank you for the work that you do. And let's hope we talk again and you'll be unemployed in this area, but happily employed doing something else.

‍

Rachel Sabella:
I hope that happens. I thank you both for your time today, the opportunity to talk about this and to dialogue, continue our dialogue about these programs. So thank you so much.

‍

Jeff Madrick:
And thank you for what you do.

‍

‍

Nikhil Goyal:
Hi, everyone. My name is Nikhil Goyal. I'm a sociologist and author of the recent book on child poverty, Live to See the Day, Coming of Age in American Poverty. It is a great pleasure to be guest hosting the Invisible Americans podcast. And today we are joined by an incredible guest, Alice Driver, who is a journalist and author of the new book, Life and Death of the American Worker, the Immigrants Taking on America's Largest Meatpacking Company. It's an outstanding work of narrative nonfiction that delves into the struggles of workers at Tyson Foods plants in Arkansas amid toxic working conditions, rampant exploitation and corporate greed. So Alice, thank you so much for joining us.

‍

Alice Driver: 
Thanks for having me, Nikhil. I appreciate it.

‍

Nikhil Goyal:
For the book, you talked to a number of immigrant children who were working 16-hour shifts in meatpacking plants, making $2.25 for every thousand chickens or so. Talk to us about what their experiences were like working in this industry.

‍

Alice Driver: 
Sorry, there's two separate things. One is children that work in the industry, and I didn't interview children for my book. I interviewed adults. I do include the issue of child labor in my book because Arkansas is at the forefront of passing child labor legislation, and there are children working within the chain of the meatpacking industry, mostly in either chicken houses or on the night shift, which is the sanitation shift. Tyson tries to distance itself from child labor because those are third party hires. Sanitation is a third party hire. And then the chicken houses are separate from the plants. So it's kind of the child labor is a complicated piece. I didn't interview children for my book, but I am working on a project now that's related.

‍

Nikhil Goyal:
I know you did write a little bit about how in a number of states they are rolling back or narrowing protections for children who are working in these plans. Could you talk a little bit about that aspect and what you've seen in other places as well?

‍

Alice Driver: 
Yeah, so in March of 2023, I'm from Arkansas, and the governor of Arkansas is Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who most of you know as the previous speaker for President Trump. And in March of 2023, she rolled back child labor legislation. In this state, she did two things. One is that she rolled back protections from children ages 14 to 16. And one part of that is that you don't need parental permission. And the second part of that is that employers are not required to verify their age, which I think is a really interesting piece of legislation to pass. And that legislation has been shared and passed in some form in other states, including Florida, Kentucky, Indiana, New Jersey, Missouri, and West Virginia. 

And so Arkansas was the first state to pass right-to-work legislation in 1944. And so I think it's really important to show, as someone who's from Arkansas, what this state is doing and that it's being used as a model basically for the message that child labor is good because children need to learn responsibility and work ethic. But if you get into it, of course, what children are working and where are they working is, you know, the more relevant question. Because they're often, one thing that I've seen is they're often unaccompanied minors, immigrants. So, of course, then if you don't need parental permission, then that works out perfectly.

‍

Nikhil Goyal:
Right. And these are often immigrant children who they're much more likely to fall into that trap of exploitation because of that history, and they know how vulnerable those kids are.

‍

Alice Driver: 
Exactly. And so what I did include in my book was, and this is, you know, in Arkansas, it is not legal for me to set foot on any, nothing related to Tyson, not the Tyson plant, not a chicken farm, not to be in the houses. But what happened was that a worker shared with me a video of these two boys who were maybe 14 and 15 who work as chicken catchers. These two boys who had, uh, talked to this organization that I wrote about called Vinceremos. Which is an Arkansas based NGO so they had come to Vince Ramos because they had been working 14 and 16 hour days, and you're basically throwing hundreds upon hundreds of chickens into these little boxes to be loaded onto a Tyson truck and it's very difficult labor. and they had not been paid. 

But two relevant issues are one is that, you know, they were from Central America, but they both spoke indigenous languages. So not only did they not speak English and they not speak Spanish, they only spoke their indigenous language. They were here without their parents, you know, in a really desperate situation. So they had been doing that work and they had not been paid. But so much of the meatpacking industry, because it's all, it's a chain of different integrated parts of the industry, then the companies distance themselves from issues related to child labor.

‍

Nikhil Goyal:
In the book, you follow a number of workers and their families, particularly during the pandemic and their struggles during that time. Tell us a little bit about some of these workers, their families, their children, what kind of lives do they live and what types of insecurities have they fall into in this line of work?

‍

Alice Driver: 
So I followed a group of workers who work at Tyson Foods in Arkansas for four years, and most of those workers are from Mexico and Central America, although Arkansas also has workers from Myanmar and from Marshall Islands and Thailand, Vietnam. workers are immigrants and refugees, some of them undocumented, some of them illiterate. So one of the couples I followed, Angelina and Flacido, they're from El Salvador, so I interviewed her about, you know, how they migrated to the U.S., what they were doing before they came, how they ended up working at Tyson, And she, for example, is from rural El Salvador. She was from a family that, you know, her brothers went to school. But as a girl, she never went to school. She always was required to work. 

And so she's illiterate. She has no schooling. And there's so many situations. And this is true for a lot of the workers in my book. And so a good example of what happens is that A few nights ago, well, actually it was in the morning, about 4 a.m., I got a call from one of the poultry workers, and she was just so upset because someone at Tyson had told her that if she spoke to a journalist, they would send her to jail. And she had obviously already, she spoke to me for my book. She called me worried and she said, can they put me in jail? And I said, absolutely not. That is not how the law works. And if they, if they threaten you or do anything to you, I want you to tell me because I will publicize it. Because we have individuals who can't read and who mostly don't speak English, they are not familiar with their rights, and it's easier to threaten them and retaliate against them and tell them things that, you know, then who are they going to verify that with?

‍

Nikhil Goyal:
At the beginning of the pandemic, we heard the term essential worker. become part of the lexicon. But we often, especially at least in the mainstream media, didn't really hear about the plight of meatpacking workers, and especially how many of them live in insecure, dilapidated housing very tightly together. with other family and friends. That was one of the incubators for how the virus spread from one household to the other. Talk to us a little bit about how we began to think about those workers at the beginning of the pandemic and how perhaps the federal government and other entities didn't necessarily or treated them as disposable in many respects.

‍

Alice Driver: 
Absolutely. And so in my book, I look at this situation, but it is true. For example, workers who I interviewed, I asked them, you know, how much is your rent? Maybe $300 a month. Imagine what kind of a place you can find anywhere in the United States for $300 a month. And it's true, they are sharing space with children, grandchildren often. And so what did that mean? When Tizen workers were infected with COVID, which the couple that I talked about, Angelina and Placido, he became infected with COVID. At the time, he didn't know it because Tyson went through a period of saying there were no cases of COVID, there was no reason to worry about COVID, and so workers really didn't have much information about it. 

But so he went home, he felt sick, he went home, his family took care of him, he died of COVID, 10 of his members got infected, and two, his wife and his oldest son were hospitalized. That's really what I wanted to show with this book, because Tyson was pressuring workers who had tested positive for COVID, this is what the workers said, that they were pressured to continue working with COVID, which is why meatpacking plants became the largest site of outbreak of COVID, aside from prisons in the United States.

‍

Nikhil Goyal:
You also write about how workers banded together and organized for more humane working conditions, especially in the face of very hostile opposition. Tell us about what that work of organizing looks like, especially considering the fact that many of these workers are speaking a variety of languages, not necessarily Spanish, but these indigenous languages, and how do they view themselves as part of the American working class?

‍

Alice Driver: 
So the beautiful thing, and what I want people to take away from my book, is that I followed a group of workers, and in this case, most of them are Spanish-speaking, because the issue of the language barrier is true with workers who speak so many different languages, it is very hard to organize. And so the workers, the Spanish-speaking workers, founded an NGO called Venceremos. It's a worker-led organization. It was founded by 16 immigrant women who work in poultry processing. During the pandemic, because the situation was so dire, work conditions were so dire, they began to organize to demand what they needed in terms of basic things like masks, social distancing, and paid quarantine. 

For example, when workers started to get sick with COVID, there was no paid, like if they didn't want to go to work because they had COVID, they would not be paid. And that's a huge issue for people who are living, you know, day to day, who don't have savings. And so what Vince Ramos did was really organize around workers who died, and say, what can we do legally to hold Tyson responsible? And they spent years organizing a class action lawsuit, which they filed in Arkansas.

‍

Nikhil Goyal:
There are a number of levers of power that can be used to hold corporations like Tyson accountable. Do you think there could be more enforcement at the federal level, or where should people and policy turn to address, whether it's from child labor issues to toxic working conditions to what have you, where should we turn to begin to undertake a more robust accountability formation of companies like Tyson?

‍

Alice Driver: 
It has to be at the federal level. I mean, this makes me think of what has happened with abortion, leaving it to the states. It leaves individuals in a very precarious situation in terms of health and safety should not be left up to the states, especially in Arkansas. Tyson is a Arkansas company, its headquarters is here, you could say that Tyson runs this state. So the enforcement is not going to come from Arkansas, as we've seen with the child labor legislation. The pandemic came along, a lot of workers died, Tyson didn't want to raise wages, they're having trouble attracting workers, so where do they go? children. I mean, that's how I read it. So I think that enforcement has to come from at the federal level, we need to be funding and staffing OSHA, which is the organization that oversees self safety and health, it's understaffed. It currently couldn't visit even a fraction of the facilities in the United States. And that's, that's a problem. And that's something that we could resolve if we had the political will to do so.

‍

Nikhil Goyal:
We're in the middle of an election season. Vice President Harris has called for building an opportunity economy, a restoration of the expanded child tax credit, among other economic policies. Our focus, at least on this podcast, has been on child poverty and other issues. What is your message to policymakers who want to relieve the suffering of these workers, as well as the suffering of their families, because they're also very much so implicated in this web of inequality?

‍

Alice Driver: 
Well, the very interesting thing for me is that in her economic plan, Kamala Harris has mentioned that we need to take on the consolidated power of the meatpacking industry, because this is the central problem. A very small number of companies have taken over the entire market, nationally and globally, and they've been accused both of colluding to fix prices, but working together to keep wages down. And so in order to fix that, we need to break up these huge companies.

‍

Nikhil Goyal:
Thank you so much for joining us. It's an incredible book over many years of reporting. And these are, I think, really critical issues, uncovering the struggles and the plight of workers who are rarely ever considered or discussed in our national politics. So thank you so much for joining us and for writing the book.

‍

Alice Driver: 
No, thanks for sharing my work. I appreciate it.

‍

‍

Carol Jenkins:
In the midst of our current election cycle, we're so happy that the issues of the child tax credit and child care come up so often. For an update on where we stand, we turn to our expert on the subject, Megan Curran, who is Director of Policy at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University. The Center recently issued a report on where we would be if the 2021 expanded child tax credit had been continued by Congress. Megan, thanks so much for being with us. We always have to check in with you to get the latest on the child tax credit. Where do we stand now, October 2024? You've written a terrific report on what things would have looked like had we had it, but where do we stand now? What do you think is the story?

‍

Megan Curran:
You know, every year in September we get the new census information for the year before and it basically helps fill in the, you know, the pieces of the puzzle to actually assess exactly how children and families are faring, and the new information that came out told us exactly the statistics for 2023. And what I think it shows us is two things. One, we still have a real problem with the concerning number of children and families experiencing poverty in this country. But two, we have a real solution available to us. And that's if we choose to use it. And, you know, and what that solution is, is, of course, the expanded child tax credit.

‍

Carol Jenkins:
And the likelihood, we now have a presidential election where one of the candidates, the first thing seemingly out of her mouth was the child tax credit, expanding it. And not only that, but I guess we would call it a baby bond or $6,000 for every brand new child born. Your reaction to that?

‍

Megan Curran:
It was extremely heartening to see that Vice President Harris used her platform to say that one of the first things, you know, she'd be interested in doing for children in this country is reinstating what we had in 2021. And that it would actually go even further by actually directing this extra support, you know, at that very critical time of birth when we actually tend to leave families sort of hanging in this country. We don't have a comprehensive paid leave program. Health care can deliver so many unexpected costs. And so she would also go a bit further than what we had during the pandemic and actually say families could have $6,000 during their first year of a child's life. The return to what we had in 2021, though, is really important because basically coming into COVID, we had over 9 million children living below the poverty line in this country. It changes slightly what we mean by technically living below the poverty line each year, but basically that would be a two-child, two-adult family living on less than $35,000, $36,000 a year. It's not a lot of money. It's really only actually a line that says, do you have enough to meet your basic needs? Have enough to eat, have somewhere to sleep, have the clothes for your kids. Over nine million children did not have that coming into COVID. 

At the height of the COVID pandemic, when we had the worst economic and public health crisis in generations in 2021, all of a sudden we had less than half that amount of children living in poverty. We went from over 9 million children living in poverty in 2019 to 4 million children living in poverty in 2021, even though we were amidst this huge crisis. Obviously, we had a lot of different COVID pandemic relief efforts going on, but one of the most important things for kids was the expansion to the child tax credit. It increased the benefit levels, it included the one-third of children across the country who are usually left out of this critical cash support, and it actually delivered the money in monthly payments so that families could count on it as part of their family budgets. 

What happened just a year later in 2022 is we let, and by we it's a collective sort of Congress and the US as a whole, let that expansion expire. And what happened is child poverty spiked right back up the fastest that it ever did. So we had 9 million children living in poverty again in 2022. And what this new census information told us is that in 2023, we actually ticked up a little more and we had 10 million children living in poverty. So that's a difference, you know, going from 4 million up to 10 million just in two years. And that's, you know, sort of whiplash in statistical figures. But what it translates to is actually all of these children, you know, all of a sudden not being able to meet their basic needs again and their parents struggling and it just doesn't have to be that way because we know we have a policy tool that could really work.

‍

Jeff Madrick:
How important would the $6,000 extension of candidate Harris be in lifting kids? Is there a quick way of measuring that? Did you do that?

‍

Megan Curran:
We've tried to take a look at it a couple of different ways, but I think what we did in our most recent report was say exactly what Carol was saying is, you know, what if in 2023, we actually had an expanded child tax credit back again? And what if we actually had one that had this baby bonus in it? And what we found is that we could have had a return to basically that very much lower rate, closer to what we had in 2021. But the difference in the number of kids who basically like are, you know, were living in poverty because there was no child tax credit available to them last year, a third of them were young children, children under the age of six. And so we know that the youngest are the most susceptible to the really negative effects of poverty. That's the time when the brain is developing. If they don't have enough food, a safe place to sleep, enough heat in the winter, air conditioning in the summer, it really affects their physical and mental and cognitive development. 

And so delivering that money, especially with that extra bonus to kids right around the time of birth. We've also done some separate analysis at the Columbia Center on Poverty and Social Policy to show that you could actually almost eradicate poverty in the month. after birth. And then if you had an expanded child tax credit sort of moving forward, you could keep child poverty at a much lower rate consistently throughout the months, throughout the years, throughout childhood. So it would really make a massive difference and sort of hit a reset button, you know, for babies and young children and then children as they grow up in this country. And so it's really heartening to see that something like this is, you know, could be a major policy by, you know, a potential candidate for president.

‍

Jeff Madrick:
It's amazing. Remember when we started talking about this, how many years ago it was?

‍

Megan Curran:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

‍

Jeff Madrick:
It seemed so unlikely that it would ever happen. And here we have a VP candidate and maybe a likely winner who is pushing it. Has she consulted with you guys?

‍

Megan Curran:
Personally, I've never had the pleasure of meeting Vice President Harris. I would hope one day to be able to chat to her about this because, I mean, their whole administration to date, the Biden-Harris administration, was so supportive of the expanded child tax credit while it was in place. And actually, Governor Walz in Minnesota also did, and has done incredible work in terms of all of the Minnesota policies that have been passed for children in the past. A couple of years, they have a huge new state child tax credit, which we had actually done some analysis for Minnesota around the time that they were passing it. 

And that state level child tax credit was projected to cut poverty by about a third for kids in that state. But they also did a lot more than that. They did free school meals, paid family leave, housing assistance, you know, all sorts of things. So it really seems that, you know, potentially a policy platform for children and families. With the two of them together, Vice President Harris and Governor Walz, you know, have a real focus on children that we haven't necessarily seen, you know, going back to the past couple of decades. It just hasn't been prioritized in the same way. Child poverty actually has a forefront of what folks are talking about on the campaign trail.

‍

Carol Jenkins:
I was telling Jeff how shocked I was that a question about child care turned up at the New York Economic Club, probably for the first time in its history.

‍

Megan Curran:
Yeah. I mean, it's about time, right? Because like without child care, then you have no one able to get to work to actually drive the economy forward. But it's been that missing. It just hasn't been talked about in terms of, you know, in the forums where we actually really need a lot of this decision making to recognize these fundamentals.

‍

Carol Jenkins:
And on the other side, J.D. Vance, the vice presidential candidate, has said that he supports the child tax credit as well. What can you tell us about what he has in mind?

‍

Megan Curran:
From the information that we have available to us, which is probably just what's available in the public sphere at the moment, it seemed that he had made some remarks that said he was also interested in making a, which would actually represent an expansion of the child tax credit as well, about $5,000 available to children. I haven't seen any particular sort of policy details on it. I haven't seen if the Trump-Banks campaign has sort of endorsed it more fully or produced any detail. You know, obviously, having both parties talk about an expanded child tax credit is hugely important and to Jeff's point, a real different trajectory than we've had, you know, because we've been a lot of us in the sort of research and policy sphere have been talking about this for a number of years but it hasn't always been. at the forefront of campaigns or anything like that. 

But I think, you know, what we have learned from the past, because the Child Tax Credit historically has had bipartisan support over the years, but the devil is really in the details as to how you expand it and whether or not that actually moves the needle on child poverty and those who would benefit from the most, or whether or not it continues to leave out kids that we've left out for generations. And so It would be really important to make sure that while a $5,000 child tax credit would be wonderful on the face of it, it would really only make a difference for the kids who need it the most if we're actually making sure that we include them because the 2017 massive tax bill that was passed under the Trump administration, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, did expand the child tax credit, you know, in terms of doubling the benefit, but it actually, you know, expanded eligibility quite far up in the income distribution. 

So it went from, you know, sort of being available to more middle-income families only, up to about $150,000, all of a sudden families with earnings up to $400,000, so close to half a million dollars, could then get this new expanded benefit. What it didn't do was close the loop at the bottom of the income distribution, where we had one out of every three children in the country not receiving the full benefit because, you know, we were conditioning it on how much their parents worked, the type of job they had, how many hours they rolled to, all of these things that children have no control over. 

And so, you know, when you expand it that way, you're sort of not really impacting poverty and you're also exacerbating inequality. So it just really matters how you actually structure a type of expansion. as to whether or not you're reaching the kids who really could benefit from it. And that's something that we would pay attention to in any sort of further details that might come out from Senator Vance.

‍

Jeff Madrick:
Has Vice President Harris actually analyzed how to create a program that works well, or is she just throwing that $6,000 number out?

‍

Megan Curran:
Again, what we understand just from the sort of details that have been put up on their website and things like that when she announced it, it sounded like it would reinstate, you know, the sort of expansion we had in 2021, which would be a higher benefit, $3,000 a year per child ages six to 17 higher bump for younger children. So $3,600 for children under six. And it sounds like basically just from that, you know, zero to one period rather than $3,600, you'd actually get $6,000. Um, there's a couple of different ways you could do it. You know, you could do that in a lump sum. If you wanted to make sure that families really had that right after birth, you could just do, you know, sort of a higher payment and then transition into you know, say the $300 a month that families were getting in 2021, you could deliver it in all sorts of ways. 

And I think, you know, a lot of that would probably be in consultation with folks like the IRS and things like that, because if you're trying to time it after a baby's birth, you'd want to make sure that there was a way that families could just let folks know, okay, this new baby is born and we would really appreciate this money now. So I think hopefully, you know, there'd be a lot of smart people putting it into place who had a lot of experience with how those monthly delivery payments rolled out in 2021 and could actually do a sort of like new and improved job.

‍

Carol Jenkins:
Well, Megan, we hope you're 1 of the people they're going to rely on. So you have your advice ready and then we'll to make this work. And we thank you so much for coming in to give us the update. How optimistic are you that this is actually going to happen?

‍

Megan Curran:
I remain extremely optimistic that we are going to see an expanded child tax credit back again. We've seen all of a sudden, even when 2021 went away at the federal level, states started doing all of this, Minnesota, Colorado, New York just made some new improvements. I mean, you've been seeing, there's now 14, 15, 16 plus states that have state child tax credits and another 10 that have active proposals. So I think the federal one will follow as soon as we sort of get that policy window because the evidence is there, and the evidence is robust, and children and families certainly need and deserve the support.

‍

Jeff Madrick:
Amazing the evidence is so robust. It's hard to believe we can ignore it, but America is capable of many things, even ignoring that. That's all I'm going to say, and I'm so angry for so long.

‍

Carol Jenkins:
No, thank you both for your long years of work on this. Congratulations. I think it's about to happen.

‍

Megan Curran:
Yeah, fingers crossed. But thank you so much for always just really highlighting these issues and just shining a spotlight on children.

‍

Jeff Madrick:
Thanks for showing up, Megan, and talking to us.

‍

Megan Curran:
Yeah, no, thank you. Thanks so much. It was so nice to see you guys.

‍

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.

‍