By Jan Hillard
NKyTribune data editor
Second of two parts
Forceful public will is necessary to change the lives of the 4 in 10 children across our country who wake up every day in poverty. There is no shortage of innovative programs that are designed to alleviate the current state of poor children. Developing programs with clear benefits for children, the workforce, and the economy is nothing new. Think tanks, academics, and foundations have proposed these sorts or interventions for decades. What impedes their funding and adoption is the unwillingness to change the tax code, the lack of legislative advocacy and coalition building, and of course, blaming others.
Work from the Children’s Defense Fund reminds us that policy inaction has real consequences for children in poverty (see Ending Child Poverty Now, 2019). These consequences include: the fact that children in poverty show gaps in their cognitive skill as early as 6 months old, that poverty triggers toxic stress impacting brain function, that poverty deprives children of nutritious food, that child poverty increases the risk of homelessness, that poor children experience worse health outcomes, that poor children are less likely to graduate from high school, and that child poverty fuels an intergeneration cycle of poverty. While we have developed blueprints for the actions and structures needed to end childhood poverty, our political culture is dominated by the “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” myth of economic advancement. This sort of shibboleth reinforces the collective “blame the victim” and ignores luck as the primary determinant of poverty. Unchecked child poverty has significant costs. The graphic below from Children’s Defense Fund lists the current cost of childhood poverty in the US as $687 billion a year in lost productivity, health, and criminal justice expenditures. The Fund estimates that every dollar invested in alleviating childhood poverty returns $7 to the economy. The return on investment is clear, our path forward through legislative inertia is less so.
Real progress in ending childhood poverty is a classic public problem that requires all of our efforts. This includes communities, legislatures, and most importantly, parents of poor children. Addressing this problem with a top-down approach will not succeed.
A number of organizations including the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Children’s Defense Fund, the National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine, as well as our own Kentucky Youth Advocates embrace a set of policy recommendations that have been developed over time, tested with pilot programs, have undergone cost calculations and are well-vetted. While each policy recommendation is associated with a return on investment, all the policies together reveal the most dramatic return on investment.
The package approach is not our standard operating procedure. Instead, our public systems favor incrementalism. In the case of child poverty, our public rhetoric must be bold and loud, it must attack stereotypes, and beat the drum of economic benefits. We will need this and more to bring about large-scale change. Below are the most impactful recommendations for the national and state levels.
National Policy
Recommendations to alleviate childhood poverty include:
• Providing Publicly Funded Transitional Jobs for Families
Transitional jobs are accompanied by workforce training that leads to higher wage, continuing employment. These jobs alleviate family hardships, facilitating better school attendance, nutrition, and stability. This type of program showed success during the Great Recession of 2008 with proven benefits to the economy.
Photo from Kentucky Youth Advocates
• Raise the Minimum Wage to $15/hour
Parents of children in poverty who work full time at the current minimum wage earn $4,669 a year, well below the poverty level. This creates deficiencies in every aspect of a child’s life and neglects parents who are doing the right thing.
• Increase the Earned Income Tax Credit
Earned income tax credit is a powerful tool in the arsenal of eliminating child poverty. Currently, the credit keeps some 3 million children out of poverty. The credit incentivizes parents to work more hours and increase their earnings, removing disincentives in the tax code. This is one of the most well-researched programs with demonstrated results.
• Make the Childhood Tax Credit Fully Refundable
Currently this tax credit increases marginally with increased family earnings, starting out at $2,000 per year per child. Families must earn $30,000/year to qualify for the full credit. Some 27 million children don’t receive the full credit. The eligibility gradations with the credit must be reworked in order to maximize its economic impact.
• Expand the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit
This credit reimburses parents for a portion of their child care expenses. The credit only applies to families who reach the minimum income threshold for filling federal taxes. In addition, the tax refund typically covers only 30-40% of child care costs.
Children’s Defense Fund photo
Increase Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs (SNAP)
SNAP addresses the hunger experienced by 15 million children, yet it provides only $1.40 per child per meal. Research shows that 50% of families receiving SNAP do not meet the standards for minimal food security. The benefits from SNAP must be recalculated using the US FDA nutritional criteria.
Expand Housing Vouchers for Low-Income Renters
Housing is a family’s largest expense. For many families in poverty, their earnings don’t allow them to afford stable housing at their community’s fair market value. As a result, they occupy subsistence level housing with conditions not conducive for children’s well-being. It is estimated that nationally 9 million families face this housing issue.
Implement the ‘Work Advance’ Training and Employment Program
This program will offer no cost workforce development training to parents whose families have an income 200% below the poverty line. Reaching only 30% of eligible people will enroll almost 500,000 in the program increasing collective earnings by $3billion per year.
Kentucky Policy
The recommended national policies presented above can dramatically impact childhood poverty in Kentucky. They are embraced by key child welfare-related agencies and foundations across Kentucky. Prominent among these is Kentucky Youth Advocates. KYA has developed a wide range of data-driven initiatives designed to alleviate childhood poverty. Their proposals address the unique challenges, as well as opportunities, that exist throughout the state. KYA regularly produces the ‘Kids Count Databook.’ This report identifies key areas related to poverty and offers policy-related recommendations. These key areas include: economic security, education, health, family and community. The recommendations for each area are presented below.
Economic Security
• Close income and earnings gaps by investing in small business and workforce development, focused primarily on high-paying industries.
• Create opportunities for family financial stability via tax code reform.
• Prevent homelessness with dedicated assistance for eviction and foreclosure.
• Protect the current Kentucky funding for Safety Net programs.
• Strengthen child nutrition support building on the pandemic assistance.
• Invest in child care infrastructure addressing care ‘deserts’ in Kentucky’s urban and rural communities using Pandemic Relief Funds to jump start investments.
Education
• Equitably allocate state budget resources to school districts in a way that takes into account district risk factors such as, poverty, racial inequity, and educational performance.
• Facilitate routine connections with parents and teachers beyond just crises in a student’s performance.
• Develop and train effective responses to student behavioral issues.
• Enhance students’ sense of belonging.
• Require districts to regularly assess student and family needs providing a one-stop approach to early detection and alignment of support services.
• Assist students of color with application and financial support for entering college.
Photo from Children’s Defense Fund
Health
• Offer paid family leave in support of early childhood development beginning at birth.
• Support routine and ongoing connections to health care.
• Improve health care responsiveness to women of color.
• Improve maternal healthcare.
• Improve the cultural hospitality of care for people of color reducing their trepidations around the health care system.
• Promote programming for teens, providing structured opportunities and places.
Family and Community
• Clarify Kentucky policy to distinguish poverty from neglect and their related programs.
• Strengthen community-based alternatives to incarceration.
• Support efforts to engage the community in community planning.
• Engage impacted families in the development of new programs.
The work of advocacy groups such as KYA is essential in identifying which “levers to pull” to ameliorate, and someday, eliminate child poverty. The work of KYA and others grows from tireless data collection and analysis, reviewing the costs and benefits of policies, and framing advocacy communication. KYA’s work offers legislators a roadmap to a better Kentucky. It is time for brave leadership and public support. With proven policies and programs, we can do this.
Jan Hillard, Ph.D., is data editor of the NKyTribune and retired Faculty Emeriti at Northern Kentucky University.
