The Economist reports that recent modelling by scholars at Columbia University estimates that in July child poverty was 41% lower than normal. America Reduces Children’s Poverty.
America has long tolerated an anomalously high rate of poverty among children relative to other advanced countries—depending on how it is measured, somewhere between one in six or one in five children counted as poor. The reason why is not mysterious. America Reduces Children’s Poverty.
The safety-net has always been thinnest for the country’s youngest: America spends a modest 0.6 per cent of GDP on child and family benefits compared with the OECD average of 2.1 per cent.
The number of households with children that reported not having enough food in the past week dropped substantially after the first payment began—going from 13.7 per cent to 9.5 per cent.
Michael Bennet, a Democratic senator from Colorado said, “It’s a recognition that the United States of America does not have to accept one of the highest childhood-poverty rates in the industrialised world as a permanent feature of our democracy and our economy,” he says.
