Story at a glance
- The Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University released a new report on the role of government programs in the Black-white child poverty gap.
- In-kind benefits, like housing subsidies and food stamps, disproportionately helped Black children living in poverty.
- At the same time, cash transfers, like the Child Tax Credit and Social Security, disproportionately helped white children.
The U.S. has tried to make headways in reducing poverty by establishing targeted social policy programs, but the national poverty rate remains high. That’s especially true among children, with a new report finding Black children are twice as likely to live in poverty than white children.
The Center on Poverty and Social Policy (CPSP) at Columbia University published a new report this week that used Census Bureau data from 2017 to 2019 to analyze how children under the age of 18 experienced poverty. It established that before any government benefits or tax credits are accounted for, 46 percent of Black children in the U.S. were living in poverty, compared to 17 percent of white children — making Black children’s poverty rate 2.71 times that of white children.
Researchers found that social policies, like food stamps, housing subsidies and Social Security, do equalize the incomes of Black and white children living in poverty, but they don’t narrow the Black-white gap in child poverty rates.
That’s a notable distinction, as Rebecca Charles, policy and advocacy associate at Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York who also worked on the new report, told Changing America.
“If you’re looking at the poverty rates, which is the most common metric, and the Black-white poverty gap, nothing has changed because those incomes may have raised but they didn’t bring children out of poverty,” Charles said.
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Charles, along with her research team, used an income-to-need ratio to understand how far above or below a family was from the federal poverty line.
They found that programs targeted for families already living in poverty, called in-kind benefits, like housing subsidies and food stamps, were found to significantly improve Black children’s income-to-needs ratio. For example, researchers found that housing subsidies increased the income-needs ratio of Black children living in poverty by 25 percent, as opposed to 6.7 percent for White children.
However, programs like food stamps and housing subsidies are specifically targeted where families can only spend those dollars on specific items or services. That can create undue limitations for families, as Christopher Wimer, co-director of CPSP, explained.
“We treated $1 food stamps equivalent to $1 cash in this poverty measurement framework, but you can’t do anything with food stamps other than buy food. So, if you’re in a jam, and you need to buy diapers, or pay a utility bill, then we know that, you can’t use your food stamps to help out with that,” Wimer said.
On the other hand, cash benefits and tax credits, like the Child Tax Credit and Social Security, are considered straight cash that do not hold spending requirements. These types of social programs were found to disproportionately help white children with their income-to-needs ratio at 80 percent. Black children’s income-to-needs ratio only improved by about 37 percent.
Researchers noted that children of color are considered more likely to live in multigenerational homes that benefit from Social Security, but Black recipients on average receive $2,330 less in annual Social Security than a white recipient. That difference can trickle down and eventually influence whether a child is considered to be living in poverty or not.
As cash transfers and tax credits disproportionately helped white children, and in-kind transfers disproportionately benefitted Black children, researchers said the opposing dynamic only exacerbates the gap between the Black-white child poverty rate.
Researchers believe that’s due to how social policy programs are currently structured, as in-kind benefits come with an income requirement. That results in more Black and Brown families becoming eligible for programs like food stamps, housing subsidies and free and reduced lunch programs.
At the same time, cash transfer benefits, like the Child Tax Credit, Social Security and unemployment insurance, carry work requirements that result in more white families benefiting than Black families.
“It’s showing that while these policies are good and they work, they’re not necessarily equitable in distribution, “said Charles.
Restructuring current social policies to better address racial inequities could carry monumental change. For example, prior to the pandemic the Child Tax Credit provided up to $2,000 per child to qualifying families at tax season. It required families to earn more income with each additional child in order to access the maximum benefit — leaving many low- to moderate-income families ineligible.
Researchers found that pre-pandemic, one out of every two Black children was excluded from the full child tax credit compared to one out of every four white children.
When the pandemic hit the U.S., President Biden passed the American Rescue Plan, which made pivotal changes to the Child Tax Credit program, such as increasing the annual credit level up to $3,600 per child and eliminating income eligibility requirements.
That policy change resulted in lower child poverty, reduced food insufficiency and improved family financial and material well-being. The expanded program was not extended into 2022, and a separate analysis by CBSP found in January, the first month without the payment, monthly child poverty increased to 17 percent. That’s the highest child poverty rate recorded since the end of 2020.
Researchers estimated if the expanded Child Tax Credit had remained in place, it could reduce the poverty rate among Black children by more than 50 percent.
CPSP’s latest child poverty report comes at a unique time when much of the country, including lawmakers, are reevaluating how current government policies live up to their intended goals.
“I think it does a good job of showing that welfare programs do work to increase incomes but they’re not doing anything in terms of closing the Black-white child poverty gap, which means that Black children will still be more likely to grow up with and have poor health outcomes, education and mental wellbeing,” said Charles.
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