It’s Now Clearer Than Ever: The US Is Choosing to Impoverish Children

Economy / It’s Now Clearer Than Ever: The US Is Choosing to Impoverish Children Robert Reich has been telling us for years that policymakers have the power to end—or increase—poverty. New Census data proves him right.

Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) leaves the Senate chamber with Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) following a vote in the Senate at the US Capitol on Wednesday, November 3, 2021. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

“Poverty,” former United States secretary of labor Robert Reich has been telling us for years, “is a policy choice.”

Reich, one of the savviest commentators on the economy and policymaking throughout his nearly five decades in American public life, has always been right about that. But he’s getting fresh support for his argument from the Census Bureau, which shows that the United States is currently making a concerted effort to impoverish children. A lot of them.

Census data released Tuesday shows that 12.4 percent of all American children were living in poverty last year. That was up from 5.2 percent in 2021—meaning that the US has just experienced the largest spike in child poverty since the current models for measuring economic distress were developed in 2009. We’ve also just seen the first increase in the supplemental poverty rate since 2010 when the United States was still wrestling with the aftershocks of the Great Recession.

But the United States is not experiencing a scorching recession like it did in the years that followed the Wall Street collapse of 2008. Employment is high, unemployment is low, and inflation—while still a frustration appears to be moderating. So what explains the poverty spike? According to the Census Bureau, the refusal by Congress to renew the enhanced child tax credit that was developed during the Covid-19 pandemic is to blame for much of the jump.

Since the relatively modest monthly bump in federal support—$250 to $300 per month for households with children—was eliminated because of congressional inaction in 2022, poverty has ticked upward. Rapidly.

“The Census data make it painfully clear: poverty—in particular, child poverty—is a policy choice,” explains the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Washington-based Quaker peace and justice lobby that has long monitored poverty rates with an eye toward developing and advancing policy interventions. “When lawmakers expanded the child tax credit in 2021, fewer kids lived in poverty. When they failed to do so in 2022, child poverty more than doubled.”

When child poverty rises, so, too, does the overall poverty rate. According to the Census Bureau, 12.4 percent of Americans lacked the resources to meet their basic needs in 2022. That was up from 7.8 percent in 2021.