By Megan Lowry

More than 9.6 million children — or 13 percent of all children in the U.S. — live in families with annual incomes below the poverty line, according to data from 2015. As closures and restrictions related to COVID-19 begin to impact the U.S. economy, it’s clear many more families will be receiving fewer paychecks and less income in the coming months, putting more children at risk of falling below the poverty line.

One year after the release of the National Academies report A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty, decision-makers and communities are examining its findings with new urgency.

The report confirms what many already know: Poverty’s impacts are wide-ranging and long lasting. Poor children develop weaker language, memory, and self-regulation skills, and as they reach adulthood, they have lower earnings and income, are more dependent on public assistance, and have more health problems. Child poverty rates are much higher for black, American Indian/Alaska Native, and Hispanic children, for children in single-parent families, and for children in immigrant families.

The report proposes two policy packages that could reduce child poverty by half within the next decade:

• A Means-Tested Supports and Work Package, which combines expansions of two tax credits with the expansion of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and housing voucher programs; and
• A Universal Supports and Work Package, which creates a $2,700 per child per year allowance, in addition to expanding tax credits, increasing the minimum wage, implementing a new child support assurance program, and other measures.

The estimated costs of the report’s proposed policy packages are substantial, $90 billion to $111 billion a year. But these costs are small compared to the $800 billion to $1.1. trillion per year that child poverty costs the nation as a result of reduced adult productivity, increased costs of crime, and increased health expenditures.

Regional and National Impact

The committee that wrote the report has shared their results with communities across the country, hosting dialogues virtually and in cities including Chicago, Austin, Boston, and Washington, D.C. in the months following the report’s release, to help communities understand how best to move forward with the policies the report suggests.

“The dialogues gave us the opportunity to dive deeper into various aspects of our report and to hear the experiences of individuals living in poverty,” said Suzanne Le Menestrel, senior program officer for the National Academies’ Board on Children, Youth, and Families, and study director of A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty. “These events gave us a forum to share findings, conclusions, and recommendations of our report with key stakeholders — including state, county, and city policymakers, practitioners, child advocates, philanthropy, and the business community — but also to engage individuals who may not normally be consumers of National Academies reports.”

Federal action to reduce child poverty has seen renewed momentum in the last year, and as lawmakers consider their options, they are turning to the report to understand the landscape of policy solutions before them.

Poverty reduction policies can, and do, improve child well-being, said members of the study committee at hearings on Capitol Hill held last month. “The committee concluded that child poverty would be much higher without our current antipoverty policies and programs,” said Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, professor of human development and social policy at Brandeis University. For example, without SNAP, the child poverty rate would increase to 18.2 percent. But they emphasized in their testimony that a blend of policies is necessary to produce a real impact. Ron Haskins, co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institute said in his testimony, “you can't reduce child poverty by half unless you combine programs.” Effective policies increase work and pay among low-income parents while also strengthening the safety net.

As state and federal leaders begin formulating their response to the economic impacts of COVID-19, the report’s interactive data explorer makes it possible to visualize the projected national and state-level outcomes for each of the report’s antipoverty policy packages. 

“The time for leadership on behalf of children and their communities is now,” said U.S. Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.), chair of the House Subcommittee on Worker and Family Support, at a hearing on March 11. “I believe that the first step is for us to set a clear goal of cutting child poverty in half. And the next step is for Congress to work together with researchers, local leaders, and the communities themselves to meet that goal by replacing poverty with economic justice for all.”

To access the report, the virtual interactive tool, and recordings of events related to the report, visit the study page.

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About the National Academies

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide expert advice on some of the most pressing challenges facing the nation and world. Our work helps shape sound policies, inform public opinion, and advance the pursuit of science, engineering, and medicine.

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