Episode 5: Three Ways to Eradicate Child Poverty and Its Residual Effects with Kercena Dozier, Alissa Quart, and Dr. Rita Hamad

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

Jeff Madrick

In this episode of “The Invisible Americans” podcast, we talk with three women who have dedicated their professional lives to eradicating child poverty and its residual effects: Kercena Dozier of the Children's Defense Fund in New York; Alissa Quart, author of the new bestseller Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream; and Dr. Rita Hamad, of the University of California San Francisco, who studied the effects on the mental health of parents who participated in the Child Tax Credit of 2021. Each brings us a fresh perspective on child poverty and what we all can do about it.

Carol Jenkins

We began with Kercena Dozier, who is the Executive Director of the Children's Defense Fund New York, part of a national organization founded more than 40 years ago by the legendary children's advocate Marian Wright Edelman. Kercena’s entire professional life [inaudible] law degree and MBA has the dedicated to erasing poverty, especially for children, from working with Mother Teresa in India, to working on New York City's unhoused crisis. And in state government, she has focused on the food and shelter insecurity of our children.

Kercena, thank you for being with us today. One of the things I love in your bio, in the description of you, it says you've spent your entire life working for children in poverty, getting them out. Tell us a little bit about how you got to that point, and, you know, why you do this work.

Kercena Dozier

I ended up attending law school in Washington, D.C., American University. And while I was there, I received my JD-MBA. And so for undergrad, I spent time in New Orleans at Loyola University. And so after my second year of law school, I ended up going back to New Orleans and interning at the Housing Law unit, which is a local governmental agency.

Carol Jenkins

And so, Kercena, now you're running the Children's Defense Fund New York division. As you know, Jeff has written the book Invisible Americans, which is what we based our podcast on, the exploration of children here in this country, the effect of the Child Tax Credit being in use and then disappearing. So, Jeff?

Jeff Madrick

Congratulations for your devotion to so many facets of child poverty globally and domestically. You've done so much, so I wanted to ask you this question because we're focusing on domestic child poverty in America, which we know is tragic also. Is there a priority in your mind in terms of policy for dealing with child poverty in America? I know there are many proposed solutions.

Kercena Dozier

I actually spent two and a half years working at the New York City's Department of Homeless Services. And for people who don't know, the largest population of those who are experiencing homelessness in New York City are children and families. People tend to think of people that you see on the street. But no. Like, the amount of children and families could fill, like, Yankee Stadium, like, two or three times. I remember, like, going out into communities and talking about the issue of homelessness, trying to get communities to open up their communities to, you know, families and children who are experiencing homelessness and just experiencing just a high degree of nimbyism and racism in the city. And so I got to the point where I stopped wanting to talk about homelessness. And I wanted to talk about the issue of poverty because I was like, homelessness is symptom of the root issue, which is issues of poverty. I am honestly a fan of not just one or two policies but having a holistic approach to tackling the issue of poverty.

This year, CDFW New York, when it came to advocating for the state budget, which we're continuing to do, we came out with our whole child, whole community, holistic budget plan for the state, saying that in order for us to sufficiently address issues of poverty, we need to look at what needs to happen from an economic mobility standpoint. So that's dealing with, you know, issues of, like, tax credits. We need to look at educational justice issues, as well. We need to look at, you know, universal childcare. We need to look at making sure that schools and communities that are disproportionately impacted by poverty have what they need, so that those children can actually succeed. We looked at -- we know that issues of gun violence, you know, are prevalent disproportionately in communities of color. And when you look at it, it is a health issue. It is a it is a poverty issue. So making sure that mental health care is available for people in the community.

Carol Jenkins

You're working now specifically in New York State, which many people don't realize how many poor children there are in New York State and how big this problem is. Can you put it in context for us? How many kids are we talking about?

Kercena Dozier

We're talking about 800,000 children in the state of New York. And then also when you look at cities of 100,000 people or more, we have three cities within New York State that ranked in the top 10. Syracuse ranks number one for child poverty, Rochester ranks number two, and I believe Buffalo ranks number six. And then in the Bronx, which is in New York City, a borough in New York City, the 15th congressional district has the highest child poverty rate in the nation.

Carol Jenkins

I was a little bit surprised to learn about the Asian child poverty in New York. Tell us a little bit about that. 

Kercena Dozier

The highest poverty rate in New York City is the Asian population. Many people don't know that or connect Asians with that particular issue in the city. But yes, absolutely.

Jeff Madrick

What do you think -- To specify one policy, what do you think of the importance of the Child Tax Credit, which the federal government passed and then ended last year?

Kercena Dozier

That was a tremendous broken promise to children and families who are suffering in our country. To be able to have a tax credit, which was supposed to lift up half or a little under half of, you know, children and families out of poverty, and to provide those children and families with that tax credit, and then for Congress to not be able to fulfill that promise by making it permanent has tremendously hurt families and children.

Carol Jenkins

And you're also working on a Working Families Tax Credit. Talk to us about that, looking at the holistic family, in addition to the children.

Kercena Dozier

In New York, we are working with a senator and assembly member on something titled The Working Families Tax Credit, and it is a tax credit that would help, you know, the poorest of families. It would help immigrant families. It would help families who, you know, have the youngest of children be able to have funding or to have money in their hands, in their pockets in order to take care of basic necessities, and then it would also be provided to families more regularly, as well.

And so we know that when, you know, the federal government, you know, is not able to step up for various reasons, we know that we depend on our states to fulfill the needs of children and families. And so we are looking for a passage of the Working Families Tax Credit to do what the Child Tax Credit used to do for families in the state.

Jeff Madrick

Do you get much pushback? Do people say you're just giving money away, and families will wasted or spend it on the parents?

Kercena Dozier

New York is an interesting place, in the sense of is one of the most expensive places that you can live in the country. And so I honestly don't know what middle class looks like in New York or even in the country, actually. And so -- and then also, like, the wages are not keeping up with, like, the cost of, like, housing and, like, rents are going up. And so people understand that there is a need for families and children to have this particular tax credit. But it comes down to will people have the political will as it relates to the price tag that comes along with it? And so that's where we have particular issues in New York, and so people tend – like, we have a Democratic governor. We have a democratic assembly. We have a democratic senate, but that does not equate to our tax credit, you know, being passed and put into our budget and signed into law. And that is something that the coalitions that we work with are fighting for.

Jeff Madrick

What kinds of people are against this tax credit? Are they just right-wing people? Are they Republicans? Are they all sorts of Americans?

Kercena Dozier

I think it is more so right-wing Republicans who are against it. So a typical thing that you hear all the time of like, “Oh, you're just -- you know, people aren't going to, like, utilize the money in, like, responsible ways. And so, like, people should just get jobs,” and different things like that when the issue was actually much bigger than that. People are living within a system that is keeping them in poverty. And so it's not as easy as someone would think, you know, in terms of being able to, like, to get a job. If you look at the minimum wage, right, in New York, where we have a minimum wage that is $15 an hour. But we're also part of a coalition that's trying to increase it to $21 an hour because you look at inflation, you look at the cost of eggs, and different things like that, that’s just what people need.

We are actively pushing back against the narrative that this is just a handout, that people will utilize the money in irresponsible ways when we know -- when the data tells us that when people have the money, they use it for basic necessities. They use it for food for their family. They use it for their rent. They use it for clothes for their children.

Carol Jenkins

You say we have a democratically led governor, senate, and assembly, and you're not confident that you'll be able to get the Working Families Tax Credits through. Why is that?

Kercena Dozier

Because there's just so many needs. And so I used to -- previous to the job that I have now, I was chief of staff for a state senator. And it's just you just inundated, just inundated with all of the particular needs of the state. And so what becomes like a priority versus what doesn't is a really tough decision. But if we are saying that, you know, our children are the most important humans, people in our particular municipalities, in our particular space, that they are our future, then they are worthy of these particular investments. But unfortunately, that's not the case on a state level, as well, as on a federal level. And I think a lot of it has to do with, like, money interest, you know, different things like that, like, issues that, you know, people need to talk about is, like, the influence of money in politics and different things like that. I think, you know, we need to be able to hold our elected officials accountable.

We literally in New York have the first, you know, woman governor of our state, and she talks a lot about being a grandmother. She talks a lot about being a mother, hearing for families and children. But yet, when she came out with her executive budget in January, tax credits were nowhere to be found in there. And she actually signed legislation in December of 2021 which created a Child Poverty Reduction Act, which commits in New York to cutting child poverty in half within 10 years. And then this is the first budget where she's been elected and where there's, like, an advisory council that is looking at the measures that she has introduced and saying, you know, are you are you doing things that are going to put New York on a path to actually cutting child poverty in 10 years? When we looked at our budget proposal, it just wasn't there. I told the coalition that we're part of, it’s just, like, a reminder that you have to continuously advocate. You have to continuously organize. You have to continuously build a movement and force people to be accountable to what they say they're going to do are to who they say that they are.

Carol Jenkins

Kercena, thank you so much. And we thank you so much for your work every single day.

Jeff Madrick

Kercena, thank you. Congratulations for all of that.

Kercena Dozier

Thank you so much.

The Invisible Americans theme by Bridget St. John

Jeff Madrick

Alissa Quart, in a series of groundbreaking books, wrote about America, its economy and families who continue to struggle. The latest bestselling book is Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream. In it, Alissa asks us to abandon our false notions of its successes and enhance our dependence on each other.

Carol Jenkins

Alissa is co-founder, with the late iconic journalist Barbara Ehrenreich, of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, which tackles the way poverty and the need for assistance is presented in mainstream media, reinforcing the sense of shame and failure about those who haven't, quote, made it in America.

Alissa, talk to us about the Economic Hardship Reporting Project that you and Ehrenreich began.

I mean, this is a truly important piece of it because so much of what we understand about poverty comes through the media. And I love your writing in the Columbia Journalism Review about that word “unskilled,” of how we diminish people who don't have college degrees and whose work is thought to be irrelevant, as opposed to essential. So talk to us a little bit about the work that you're doing there.

Alissa Quart

Yeah. So it was Barbara's idea. She came up with it in 2012. I was producing a film called The Last Clinic, and I went to her for funding. And it was very, very small at that point, the organization, and basically, she and I had this incredible conversation about Jane and about abortion, the early days of the abortion rights movement, and I just felt weird. I felt like I'd met my person.

And it's like -- it was sort of like the way people feel when they fall in love. But I was, like, it was, like, literally, I met Barbara Ehrenreich. And I was meant to meet Barbara Ehrenreich. I don't know. And then I joined her and started running it with her. And she insisted on calling us co-editors, which confused people because she wanted flat hierarchies. She died earlier this year, by the way, for anyone listening. And so that's why I'm talking about her in past tense. But yeah, we were incredibly close. And it was new to me to get that kind of -- it's not quite mentorship. It's like collaboration with an older person, that kind of moral guidance.

And so we were able to make this project that serves financially stressed writers, photographers, and filmmakers and gets their work into the media ecosystem on a large scale. Last year, we published -- We had 500 separate placements of articles, films, etc. Obviously, when we started, it was much smaller. It was me and Barbara on the phone every day going through a slush pile. But the idea is to try to get these myth-busting stories, often written by people who are poor, into Cosmo, into the New York Times, onto television screens, and we've been really successful.

Jeff Madrick

Well, I love to hear that. I love the idea that narrative can change people's lives. And counter narratives, which we really need a lot of, can change people's lives. Counter individualism, for example. I don't think when I grew up, we had any, did we? Or did we? I think, really, when Johnson came in with anti -- with his civil rights programs, there was some serious reconsideration of individualism. But I think you suggest -- and I was a little surprised to read this in your book -- that there is some positive thinking about communitarianism. Or did I read this incorrectly?

Alissa Quart

Last I checked -- I have to check the DSA numbers, but they -- the Democratic Socialists of America, but they've gone up to like 45,000 members or something. And there's, like, mutual aid. I'm editing this -- I'm looking at a film that we're working with people on, it's about a mutual aid car repair shop in Alabama. There's a rise in worker-owned cooperatives that I've written about. And I've been really interested in the work of Jessica Gordon Nembhard about Black co-ops from the 19th and 20th century, that in earlier times, when we needed to have alternative models, they often came from people who didn't fit into the traditional hierarchies of power: women, people of color, blah, blah, blah, you know, and they led the way for us. And we just need to follow them. We have to go into history to find them again.

Carol Jenkins

Alissa, you seem to be demanding that we as a country rethink how we relate to each other, period. Tell us what you would hope to see in this community building, as opposed to the shaming of those trapped in poverty, the assisting of those trapped in poverty.

Alissa Quart

Yeah, well, I call it the art of dependence. And so I guess with the book, it's a part of it I called radical self-help. And again, inspired by Barbara’s example where she had a serious critique of traditional self-help, which put all the pressure back on an individual. But I think there's a kind of self-help that frees people by making them see that there's a system error that's put them where they are.

And the art of dependence is the opposite of what we're told. We're told to be resilient. We're told to be gritty. We're told to help ourselves to be more mindful, more grateful. Why don't we celebrate the ways we're dependent on each other and even dependent on systems, even the intelligence it takes -- I mean, shocking to say, the intelligence it takes to get unemployment money or welfare is a skill, and it's an art of its own.

So I think that, I guess, the reframe is that I'm looking for here is for us to see the ways we're dependent, the way I'm dependent on my caregiver who occasionally now picks up my daughter. Or I'm dependent on – historically, I was dependent on my teachers. And the way that families are dependent on each other, people in workplaces. Our organization, we're dependent on our supporters or contributors. And that's the reframe. The reframe is, on an individual level, is to start reframing what success means in terms of that, and failure, too.

Jeff Madrick

We should have pride, I think, to be sentimental about it, we should have pride in our dependencies.

Alissa Quart

Yes, exactly.

Jeff Madrick

And it's distressing that people shame poverty all the time, especially poverty among people of color. So I hope we can change that thinking around. That's what I would devote myself to, if I were you.

Alissa Quart

I'm trying. I mean, part of the project with EHRP is to try to get these voices who are arguing for this in their own voice, like, you know -- my voice is not -- is fine as a big-picture critic, whatever. But the people who are really experiencing this -- I was very struck by one of our contributors who had been a grocery store worker during the pandemic. And this incredible essay, she wrote about that experience where she said, “I am curbside delivery,” which I thought was incredibly powerful, like, the way that curbside delivery during in the pandemic was completely depersonalized. It was something some clever Bobo was doing to get their Whole Foods, right?

She was saying, “No, the curbside is me. I'm, like, a human being afraid of –” this was before there was the jab or whatever, you know -- “I'm afraid of getting sick. I'm in a store, and I'm putting these boxes out for your car. That's one way I guess, to show and even when people think that they're independent, they're dependent. All those shoppers were dependent on her. And I got that in the New Republic.

I mean, part of our model at EHRP is to co-publish. And I did that by design, because I felt like, you know, a lot of these nonprofits -- and, you know, Barbara and I interacted a lot with a lot of other nonprofits. I know Carol has -- some are destination sites, and some are collaboration sites, I guess, feeder sites, and making it more of a feeder site. But I felt like I could have a bigger multiplier effect and affect others in the media, right? Not just -- so getting that piece into New Republic and then getting that into Nonprofit Quarterly so it could affect thinking in the philanthropy world. And then further to get her on radio, which I did, on Our Nation podcast. To me, that was -- and then we made her a fellow, and she had not published before. And so it was really remarkable. Maybe we can even have that piece along with this show because people can see her work. I feel like when you see this person and you see what it took to be a grocery store worker, you'll never think about curbside delivery the same way again.

Carol Jenkins

Alissa, thank you so much for your work, for your books, all of it. Thank you for being with us on the podcast.

Jeff Madrick

Thank you for your great effort.

Alissa Quart

Oh, thank you. Thank you so much, you guys.

The Invisible Americans theme by Bridget St. John

Jeff Madrick

Dr. Rita Hamad, MD and PhD, is a social epidemiologist and family physician in the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies and the Department of Family and Community Medicine at UCSF.

Carol Jenkins

She is the director of the social policies for Health Equity Research Program and was one of the researchers on a study of the mental health of parents who received support from the expanded tax credit of 2021 that sent monthly cash payments to families. Thank you so much, Professor Hamad, for being with us.

The mental health piece of poverty is often overlooked, but I know that that's where a lot of your work is. You know, tell us what you've learned and how you operate in your center, where you're fighting for mental health equity among the poor, how that is going.

Rita Hamad

In my field, which is social epidemiology, we look at how social factors, like income, poverty, education affect people's health. And looking at mental health is a key aspect of health that we focus on because mental health just affects your ability to live in the world, to function, to raise your children. There have also been plenty of studies that show that people who have higher levels of stress, their bodies have higher levels of inflammation that puts them at higher risk of other chronic diseases like diabetes or heart disease, just that constant mental, mental health problems. So definitely mental health, I think, is one of the key ways we say that social factors get under your skin or get into the body to cause even other kinds of diseases.

My research team, we do a lot of studies like this where we look at the effects of other safety net policies on health problems. Again, mental health is one of the outcomes that we often look at. So for example, we have a lot of research before this CTC paper looking at the effects of the Earned Income Tax Credit. So the Earned Income Tax Credit is the largest poverty alleviation program in the U.S. For people who aren't familiar with it, it operates also through the tax system. It's a tax refund that low-income working families get when they file their taxes every year. And several of my own studies have found that it does improve mental health, maybe not in the short term, right when people get the benefit, but sort of that repeated exposure over time to having enough money for your family improves mental health.

And then studies by other colleagues of mine at UC Berkeley and elsewhere have also found that it reduces suicide levels, really getting to those depths of despair that we hear about. So I think we have a lot of consistent evidence that income is beneficial for your mental health. Some people often ask me, “Why do you do this research?” That seems like a “no duh” kind of question.

It's not consistent that we find those types of findings. And it is important to know which policies are working and for whom. In a lot of cases, we find that that the policy works overall, but really more for one group of people than the other because maybe one group had difficulty accessing the policy. There's definitely studies out there. There are these studies of lotteries that show that when people get lottery money, you think, you know, that's a huge income payment that would be great for your mental health, that maybe it improves their mental health in the short term, but not in the long term. And so it's really important that for us to understand how are policies working and who are they working for so that we can design them intelligently going forward?

Jeff Madrick

When I did research on my own book on child poverty, it was quite clear that 10 – or maybe I guess it was 20 years ago or so, a lot of academics did not believe money was the major issue. I mean, there was quite a backlash, I think, from the academic community. Now, I think the community, which is something I favor -- I wrote a chapter called Money Matters. Now the community has come around to believe money is a key issue, if not the key issue, for many of these families. That seems to be consistent with what you're finding.

Rita Hamad

Yeah, I think there's a lot of increasing recognition that what's called the social determinants of health or social drivers of health are very important for people's health. I think even health care systems, which often are focused on their own contributions to health, you know, its doctors and medications that work, even health care systems are starting to recognize that they can only do so much and that they really need to be thinking outside of their own walls. And what happens to these patients when they leave the health care system, when they go home to, you know, a neighborhood that socio-economically disadvantaged, or when they don't have enough money for housing or food. And there's a lot of recognition that that's where we need to be focusing, is looking at those social drivers of health.

Again, health care, you know, as a physician, I also work in health care systems, where there's now a lot of interest in screening patients for social needs and trying to figure out how to connect patients with the services they need other than just medications and lab tests and that kind of thing. And, you know, a lot of states are looking to expand how their Medicaid systems function. Medicaid as a health insurance for the lowest income Americans, to make sure that Medicaid is providing reimbursements for those social screenings and social referrals.

So I think it's just widely recognized as something that we should be thinking about and that we shouldn't just keep thinking about treating people with more health care. We need to think about what's causing their disease in the first place. And poverty is a major driver of that.

Carol Jenkins

Can you talk to us about the children of poverty a little bit in terms of what you see the rates of anxiety, depression, suicidal, those kinds of things? How are children in poverty doing?

I mean, are these astronomically higher numbers in terms of anxiety, depression, and suicide attempts among the children of the poor?

Rita Hamad

Children are very astute and can see the stress that their family is under. And they are also stressed out by having to move because of housing instability or not being able to consistently be fed because of food insecurity. I think we just have mountains of research showing how health problems of any kind, mental health, physical health, are all worse among the lowest income children. You know, the question for us as a society is, even if we think that's, you know, that somehow the adults sort of put themselves into their own trouble and sort of don't deserve to be helped, I think as a society, regardless of which side of the aisle you sit on, I think there is or should be bipartisan agreement that children should not be blamed for the situations into which they’re born. And we really need to be thinking about policies that can lift children up that, you know, regardless of whether their parents are working or not, or where they live, what state they live in, what neighborhood they happen to be born into and policies like the Child Tax Credit, have that potential.

Studies like ours and these others that I've been talking about that show the improvements in food insecurity all show that that this type of policy has the potential to improve the environments of all children and give them all that chance to be healthy, productive, happy adults.

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. And 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.

Carol Jenkins

Our thanks to Kercena Dozier, Alissa Quart, and Dr. Rita Ahmad for being with us today and for their dedication. You will find additional information about our guests and their work on our website at theinvisibleamericans.com. We hope you'll follow us on our social media to keep up with breaking stories about child poverty. We're on Instagram and Facebook. In addition to listening on our website, theinvisibleamericans.com, you will find us on Spotify, Apple, and most podcast platforms. Thanks so much for listening. We’ll see you the next time.

The Invisible Americans theme by Bridget St. John

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