We’re Doing It Again – Doubling Childhood Poverty

Child poverty more than doubled between 2021 and 2022. That’s 5.1 million children pushed into misery, for it really is miserable to be poor in America.

Child poverty and near poverty in America was around 60% when I grow up in 1960’s. Compared to other industrialized nations we have never been a leader – always between 25th and 40th in child poverty rankings among our peers. From the 1960’s through the 1990’s, our childhood poverty rates hovered around 30% (significant multiple of the other advanced nations). Including poverty and near poverty statistics, about half of American children missed meals and lived in misery during at the time.

This is not because we are a poor nation. It’s because we have a harsher capitalistic system than other advanced nations. We also have little empathy for poor people. Everybody should be rich in America. The dream lives on.  We blame poor people for being poor. It’s an ugly cycle.

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Impossible Questions & Painful Statistics

Ironically, we have been a supporter of poor children around the world at a higher rate than a supporter of our own children.

We also work to keep seniors out of poverty Their support is a significant multiple of what we spend to keep children out of poverty.

This Paul Krugman NY Times article shows that we are diving back into more child poverty by ending Biden’s program that saved millions of children from malnutrition and the misery of poverty. From Paul’s article;

More than half of the rise in child poverty could have been avoided by extending the 2021 enhancement of the child tax credit. Such an extension would probably have had a direct budget cost of about $105 billion a year.

That may sound like a lot to people who aren’t familiar with the sizes of both the U.S. economy and other major social programs. But it’s actually a modest sum. It’s less than half a percent of the country’s gross domestic product. It’s a small fraction of what we spend on Social Security ($1.3 trillion) and Medicare ($800 billion). It’s only a bit more than half the annual revenue loss from the 2017 Trump tax cut.

This article contributed by former CASA

guardian ad Litem volunteer Mike Tikkanen

KARA advocates for the people, policies and programs

that improve the lives of abused and neglected children.

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The U.S. will likely fall back to almost 30% childhood poverty if current publlc/political will stays where it is.

Let your State Rep know how you feel about this (find them here)

Other advanced nation childhood poverty statistics;