How To End Extreme Child Poverty

Buried deep in the latest pandemic stimulus package is a transformative approach to helping families.

- By H.luke Shaefer and Kathryn J. Edin

On August 14, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law one of the most successful anti-poverty programs in the nation’s history. The Social Security Act’s old-age benefit was founded on a moral certainty: It was wrong that elderly Americans might suffer destitution when they were no longer able to work. The act promised that every worker would be able to count on support as they aged, however, their fortunes might change. The program was contentious at the time, but its passage was enabled by the rare circumstance of the Great Depression. The benefit for older Americans has expanded over time to become part of the basic infrastructure of American life. By one estimate, nearly 40 percent of all elderly people today would fall into poverty without it.

Buried deep in President Joe Biden’s pandemic stimulus, the American Rescue Plan is the seed of a similarly transformative government program. This program holds the promise of dramatically cutting child poverty and effectively eradicating its most extreme forms, nationwide. The expanded, fully refundable child tax credit sounds complicated, but the ideas behind it are simple, and its design has been tested in many other countries. It’s based on the principles that children deserve the opportunity to thrive, and that money can help.