The Daily - Why Fewer American Children Are Living in Poverty

Episode Date: September 26, 2022

The high poverty rate among children was long seen as an enduring fact of American life. But a recent analysis has shown that the number of young people growing up poor has fallen dramatically in the past few decades.The reasons for the improvement are complicated, but they have their roots in a network of programs and support shaped by years of political conflict and compromise.Guest: Jason DeParle, a senior writer at The New York Times and a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine. Background reading: Child poverty in the United States has fallen 59 percent since 1993, a new analysis showed.Few states have experienced larger declines in child poverty than West Virginia. One family’s story illustrates the real-life impact that an expanded safety net has provided to millions across America.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. The high poverty rate among American children was long seen as an enduring fact of American life. But a new analysis shows that in recent decades, it has declined dramatically. shows that in recent decades, it has declined dramatically. Today, I speak with my colleague Jason DeParle about the remarkable drop in child poverty and the surprising reasons behind it. It's Monday, September 26th.

Jason, you wrote a series of stories recently about this really remarkable decline in the number of American children who live in poverty. Tell us about your reporting. 80s when more than a quarter of American children were poor. And the number just didn't move from year to year. It was stuck. It seemed like a problem that American society just didn't know how to fix. Ronald Reagan famously said the federal government declared war on poverty and poverty won. So there was a sense of fatalism about the ability to erase this moral stain on of American society. And then one day I was looking at a graph and I saw something starting to change. The share of American children in poverty was declining substantially. And I decided to look further to understand what was happening with low-income children in America and what were the forces behind it. And I found that over the course of a generation, child poverty fell 59%.

Wow. The share of children in poverty went from more than one in four back in 1993 to about one in ten today. That's a huge drop. A huge drop, yes. And why was that the case? I mean, what had happened? One thing that happened was that the Census Bureau changed the way it was measuring poverty. Traditionally, the government measured child poverty while leaving out the impact of most safety net programs.

So the government delivers tens of billions of dollars a year in wage subsidies, through tax credits, in nutritional aid, through food stamps, in housing assistance, through programs like Section 8 and public housing. The old way of measuring poverty ignores all that aid. So the government could spend and spend and spend and seem to make no difference because it simply wasn't measuring the impact of that aid. But in 2009, the government began using a new poverty measure, which does take into effect the impact of government aid. And once you take that into account,

you start to see that child poverty rates are going down significantly. So there's this new measure, and it's kind of like x-ray glasses, right? You couldn't see any of the effect at all. And then suddenly you do because you put these glasses on and you realize, oh my gosh, there has been an effect. That's exactly the reaction I had when I was looking at the graph. It's like I put on different glasses. Wow, the line's going down, it's not going straight flat like it used to, and things are getting better for low-income families. That's good. Okay, so this new way of measuring poverty allowed you to see that there was a decline, but what actually caused that decline? Well, Sabrina, lots of things shape

child poverty. I mean, the economy grew. We're a richer country than we were a generation ago. Minimum wages grew when you take into account state-level increases in the minimum wage. So people at the bottom saw their earnings rise somewhat. Family living arrangements change. There are slightly more children living in two-parent households. The share of children born to teen mothers has declined greatly. Lots of economic and demographic forces contributed to the decline in poverty, but a dominant force was the expansion of government aid. Okay, so tell me about that, this shift in the federal government's response to poverty. When do you see it really taking off?

Sabrina, I think the story begins in the 1990s. Welfare should be a second chance, not a way of life. When Bill Clinton ran for president as a reformist Democrat. In my administration, we're going to put an end to welfare as we have come to know it. Pledging to end welfare as we know it. No more permanent dependence on welfare as a way of life. By welfare, he meant one particular program called Aid to Families with Dependent Children.

It was the main cash welfare program for women with children. The program gave poor mothers a monthly cash payment. It wasn't a lot, maybe $350 a month or so. And critics of the program thought it was promoting two problems. Does welfare cause illegitimate birth? What the welfare system did was make it possible to take care of a baby without having a husband.

One, it was seen as encouraging women to have children outside of marriage, breaking up the family. Why should we have to pay for you to sit at home, watch your soap operas? Some people are poor because of the value choices that they make in their behavior. And it was also seen as discouraging single mothers from going to work. Got it. So Clinton set out to effectively end this program. Well, I think most people thought what he would actually enact would be a modest reform. I would say to my friends in the Democratic Party that there is much to what Ronald Reagan

was trying to get done and there's much we can share with each other. Instead, Republicans heard this rhetoric, end welfare, and ran with it. We must replace the welfare state with an opportunity society. They took over Congress midway through his first term. We passed first in the House and now in the Senate a strong welfare reform bill. I believe the president has an absolute moral obligation to sign this bill. He campaigned in 1992, promising to end welfare as we know it. We're about to send him welfare reform. And defined ending welfare in a much more literal way than he had ever envisioned.

And so what was the outcome, Jason? The outcome was a law passed in 1996, which Clinton signed right before he ran for re-election, that put strict time limits and work requirements on cash aid, making it much harder for low-income mothers to get help when they were not working. So half of Bill Clinton's legacy was the radical reduction of government assistance to one group of families, to single mothers who didn't work. But at the same time, you had a very large expansion of aid to low-income families who did work. And that's because public officials, particularly Republicans, became more sympathetic to low-income people when they were working than when they weren't. There was more sympathy, more political support for aiding the working poor. And I think

that second trend got less attention. The passage of the 1996 welfare bill helped shift the political dynamics of poverty and made it easier to pass expansions of aid to the working poor. So effectively, there was this big shift in assistance from poor people who weren't working to poor people who were working. That's true, but it wasn't just taking money from one group of people and giving it to a different group of people. Overall spending on low-income families grew. Okay, so tell us how the government expanded its spending for poor people. I think a number of programs are relevant to this story, but to really understand the decline in child poverty, you have to understand something called the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Oh, boy. you have to understand something called the earned income tax credit. Oh, boy. It sounds really opaque, technocratic, something your accountant checks off on your form once a year. But what it really is is a system of annual bonuses, cash bonuses, checks in the mail to low-income families. Pretty big checks. $3,000, $4,000, $5,000, sometimes $6,000 a year, no strings attached, as a kind of wage subsidy to compensate

for how little our economy pays some workers. So a huge influx of cash once a year. Yes. People buy cars. They pay down overdue utility bills, they take the kids to the mall. Yes, I mean, a lot revolves around the provision of this annual subsidy. And what other programs expanded? Fast forward a couple decades later, there's a program called the Child Tax Credit, which is sort of the same thing. It's a wage subsidy for families who work. It initially was small and left out most low-income families. Over time, it grew and extended to more low-income families. So by 2019, if you were a full-time worker at the minimum wage and you had two kids, you could get $8,300 a year. So more than $8,000

a year from the two programs combined. That's more than three times what it was in 1993. So that annual bonus, that annual amount that is such a foundational part of the financial lives of low-income families, that tripled in size over those two decades. And both for working families? They were only for working families, yes. But there were also significant expansions of aid to families who didn't work. A prime example of that is in the food stamp program, which is now called SNAP. And with the other programs, they expanded the size of the benefit. With food stamps, they made it easier to get the benefits to which people were entitled. It used to be that lots and lots of people couldn't get through the bureaucracy, the

red tape, all the forms that you had to fill out to get food stamps. And so the idea was, hey, these people are busy working. We got to make it easier for them to access the programs. And by doing that for working families, they also made it easier to access the programs for everybody. So the entire program, more than double the number of people getting help from food stamps. So Jason, all of this spending, primarily, of course, to help poor people who were working,

ended up benefiting everyone. Exactly. Part of what was so striking about the decline in child poverty Exactly. fell among the native born. The poverty rate among Black children in 1993 was about 50%. Half the Black children in this country were poor. It fell by two-thirds, so 17% of Black children were poor. That's still too many children, but it's a lot less than half. We'll be right back. So, Jason, you were talking about these really big changes that anti-poverty programs had wrought in the lives of children in America since the early 1990s. Tell me about someone whose life was affected. One of the things that was striking about the decline in child poverty was that it went down in every state. And one of the states it went down the most in was West Virginia.

Child poverty over the past generation has fallen by almost three quarters in West Virginia, which is a place that once epitomized child poverty. Mommy, mommy, mommy. So we made a trip to West Virginia. Actually, let me back up. Who are you and where are we? Excuse me. I'm Cece, still you Jackson. I met a woman named Cece Jackson.

You guys stay this way, please. We went to a couple of different parks together and hung out with the kids. I really like Cece. The first thing she said to me is, my life is an open book. And, you know, as far as I could tell, it really was. She was very open. I grew up on the struggle bus. One thing Cece made clear is that she grew up a lot poorer than her kids.

Sometimes I still drive the struggle bus, I guess. Her dad was a truck driver who injured his arm at work and went on disability aid. So she grew up getting by on her father's disability aid. Looking back now, I'm like, okay, well, we didn't have this or we didn't have that, but they made do. Another thing that she said to me that really jumped out at me, she said she'd had exactly one vacation the whole time she was growing up. I think we went to Myrtle Beach when my dad got his disability check. It was to drive to Myrtle Beach from her home in West Virginia. One time. One time.

By the time she was in high school in Huntington, West Virginia, she was pretty much raising her sister's toddler because her sister was addicted to opioids. She was way behind in school, and in her junior year, she found out she was pregnant. It was scary, but I had this little baby to provide for, so. She dropped out her senior year with, I think, more worries than plans and went to try to sign up for welfare. And, like, you could only stay on it for a certain amount of time and then your benefits would stop. Discovered that the system was strict.

There were time limits, there were work requirements. So it kicked my butt into gear, I'd say. stop. Discovered that the system was strict. There were time limits, there were work requirements. So it kicked my butt into gear, I'd say. In a good way or a bad way? In a good way. Meaning they put pressure on her to go out and get a job. Dad, do you have mom's wallet? No, I don't. When Cece's son was a toddler, she met a guy. We'll get something later. A jazz musician who was studying at Marshall University. They got together and had two more children. They're married now. So it's Cece, her husband Jaron, and their three children. So Cece got a job as a counselor at the Head Start program. She's been working there for five years. What did you start at? Let's see,

I think it's $975,000. And you're up to what? $1,128,000. Her annual income after you take out taxes and work expenses is about $20,000. The poverty line in Huntington, West Virginia for a family her size is $31,000. So she would be $11,000 below the poverty line without government aid. But she does get government aid. She gets a lot of government aid. She gets $20,000 a year. Without that assistance, her three children would be poor. With it, they're not. And Jason, how does that $20,000 a year she's getting from the government break down? What kinds of programs? She gets about half of her government assistance from nutritional aid, mostly from the SNAP program or food stamps, but also from school meals and from a program called WIC, which helps mothers with young children.

about that aid is something I heard a lot of low-income parents say, which is that it really reduces the stress. That when you're short on food, you're constantly thinking about how are you going to feed the kids? And having the substantial nutrition safety net that she has alleviates that source of stress. The other major source of assistance she gets comes from tax credits. We talked about that earlier. These are essentially wage subsidies to low-income workers. They come once a year. So she gets about $10,000 a year in an annual check. And how do they spend that tax money? You know, Sabrina, one way to figure out

what people spend their tax money on is to take a tour of the house. And that's what I got to do with Cece and Jaron. So this is the boys' room, and I promise you it was halfway clean. They had told me they'd paid off some utility bills. This is their space-themed blankets

and sheets. They had taken the kids shopping. Let me guess Lyric's favorite color. Try to guess. They painted the kids' rooms. It's a little pink in here. Yeah, a little bit, huh? A little pink. They decorated them. There's a really sweet sign here. Yeah, a little bit, huh? A little pink. They decorated them. There's a really sweet sign in the little girl Lyric's room.

And then that's my favorite one. It said, sweet baby, I love you more than all the stars in the sky. You like the idea of Lyric waking up or coming in this room and seeing? Seeing positive things and know that she's loved and worth it. And then there's this room... Where are we? We are in my living room

in Huntington, West Virginia. It's partly Jaron's music studio, but it's also Cece's craft studio. She's hoping to make some money selling custom-made t-shirts and coffee mugs, but she also described it as a kind of mental health program. Keeps my mind busy. It's like such a creative space. You got the keyboard going on one side of the room and the crafting on the other. This is usually our life. As I said, Jaron's a musician. He plays seven seven instruments. Some of his songs are dedicated

to CeCe and to the difficulties they've been through together. Jaron's got a lot of talent and they made an interesting decision together to let him stay in school full-time to try to earn a degree in music production. He hopes to run his own studio someday, but for now he's in school and taking care of the kids.

So they're relying on her income alone. I usually don't perform that one. I like it. There's some good moments in it. Well, the big thing they did this year is they bought a car. We got a car, thankfully. Huge. They had two previous used cars that had both broken down. We bought many lemons is what they call it, cars that just are terrible and they blow

up before you get your use out of it. So they'd spent the previous months walking through the West Virginia winter to school and work without a car. This time they bought the smallest, cheapest vehicle that Ford makes, a blue EcoSport. We got the Blueberry. It helped us. Why is it called a Blueberry? Because it's blue. And that's what my kids named it. And they've started to take it on road trips. They went to the Columbus, Ohio Zoo two hours away. It helped us. Why is it called a blue bear? Because it's blue. And that's what my kids named it. And they've started to take it on road trips.

They went to the Columbus, Ohio Zoo two hours away. They took it to amusement park. They have taken the kind of vacations she was unable to do as a child. Jason, what did the Jacksons say about their situation? Do they think of themselves as poor? You know, I asked all the families that I talked to in Huntington. I thought it was an interesting question. Do you consider yourself poor? And Cece probably had the most interesting answer of all.

Do you consider yourself poor? Nah. What would you consider yourself? Trying. That's the best I can say. Would you consider trying? That should be the option between poor and like middle class should be trying. Jason, what is the Jackson story? Tell us about all of these anti-poverty measures, you know, cash assistance, work rules and in the politics around them. I mean, who was right? work rules and the politics around them. I mean, who was right? I think most conservatives would look at her story when she became pregnant in high school and dropped out and went on welfare

as a pivotal moment that the welfare system said, hey, there's time limits, there's work requirements. This can't be a way of life. You've got to go out and do something to support yourself. And she got that message. She got her GED. She went back and she got a job. They would say that's social policy making its mark on somebody's life. I think most progressives would say, well, that's well and fine. She got a job, but it paid a poverty wage. And it's only through substantial government benefits that her children escape poverty. I think they draw opposite lessons, to tell you the truth. And I guess in some strange way, these policies were really the result of a political compromise,

right, going back to the 90s. I mean, it's really both parties have built this increasingly large set of government programs over time. I'm not sure I would say it's compromised exactly. We've been talking about this move to reward low-income families who work, and that's an important part of the story. But there are also other things going on in other programs that have helped drive child poverty to record lows. There was a Supreme Court decision in 1993 that made it easier for poor children to

collect disability aid. More children are now living with aging parents or with grandparents and therefore can receive help from the more generous Social Security program. There have been large expansions in the reach of the school lunch programs for reasons that have nothing to do with this desire to incentivize people to work. So either by luck or by wisdom, we've hit upon a mix of policies that have managed to help low-income families to work, often managed to continue to support families who don't work, and that together have driven child poverty rates to record lows. So Jason, I'm thinking back to the quote you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation, you know, from Reagan, that the federal government declared war on poverty

and poverty won. Was Reagan wrong? I can't think of a single quote that had a more profound effect on social policy than that line. It imbued a sense of fatalism that I think inhibited social policy for a generation. And the decline in child poverty has now rendered that line obsolete. When I first started covering poverty in the 1980s, the idea that you would see a 60% decline in child poverty was just unthinkable. So the fact that we've made as much progress as we have is a reminder to me, at least, that government policies really can make a difference in people's lives. policies really can make a difference in people's lives. Now, at the same time, 8 million children remain in poverty and there's significant hardship even in families that aren't statistically poor. But what I take away from it is just the idea that progress is possible even on issues that seem intractable.

Jason, thank you. Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. Over the weekend, a crisis in Iran deepened as protests over the death of a young woman spread to more than 80 cities. Earlier this month, Masa Amini, a woman in Tehran, was arrested for what police said was improper dress. She died three days later in police custody. In the 10 days since, protests have spread custody. In the 10 days since, protests have spread and the authorities have struggled to control

surging public anger. Videos have circulated showing women tearing off and destroying their hijabs or head coverings. Police vehicles have been set on fire. And on Sunday, the Associated Press counted 13 dead and more than 1,200 demonstrators arrested. The protests come at a sensitive moment for Iran. The country's economy is at its weakest in years, and its supreme leader, who has the final say over religious, political, and military affairs, is gravely ill. He's been in power since 1989.

And on Sunday, the far-right party of Giorgio Maloney appeared to hold a wide lead in a national election in Italy. Maloney's party, Brothers of Italy, is in alliance with two other right-wing parties in Italy's parliamentary system. If they succeed, Maloney is likely to become the first far-right prime minister since the end of World War II in Italy, and the first woman to ever hold the office. Her success comes at a critical time for Europe. European countries are reeling from skyrocketing costs of energy since the war in Ukraine, and soaring inflation is also taking a toll. Maloney has opposed immigration and LGBTQ rights, but in recent weeks has softened,

backing off her most strident populist rhetoric. Today's episode was produced by Nina Feldman and Stella Tan, with help from Michael Simon Johnson. It was edited by Patricia Willans, with help from Mark George. Fact-checked by Susan Lee. And contains original music by Marian Lozano and Dan Powell. It was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily.

I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. We'll see you tomorrow.