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Ending Childhood Poverty in America 0c— Marian Wright Edelman

From the Children’s Defense Fund, Washington, DC The author reports no conflicts of interest. Address correspondence to Marian Wright Edelman, Children’s Defense Fund, 25 E St NW, Washington, DC 20001 (e-mail: lrobinson@ childrensdefense.org).

A cademic Pediatrics 2016;16:S6-S7

SARAH IS 3 years old. She and her 6-year-old brother, Bryce, are inseparable except when it’s time for him to visit the summer food program that provides meals at a school near their Ohio home for children who otherwise would go hungry. Sarah’s too young to make the trip. One morn­ ing after Bryce had his fill of food for the day he made a detour before heading home. He walked to the trash cans and began rummaging through food others threw away. Winnie Brewer, the Food Services Supervisor in Marion City Schools, noticed the little boy and tapped him on the shoulder to ask why he was sifting through the garbage. “My little sister,” he explained. “She's hungry.” Bringing her leftover food was the only way he knew to help.

“We run into a lot of situations where kids will come and say they have younger siblings at home,” Brewer says. “They always want to know if they can take something back.” After Brewer spoke with Bryce, staff members fol­ lowed him home with a care package for little Sarah. This was a temporary solution to a huge problem Brewer worries about every day. “Until we see that child digging food out of a trash can, it doesn’t hit home,” Brewer says. “When it does, you know you have to do something.”

Sarah and Bryce (not their real names) are far from alone. Hunger is only one of the dangerous risks of growing up poor in rich America. Despite 6 years of economic re­ covery, children remain the poorest group in America and the younger they are the poorer they are. The United States has the second highest child poverty rate among 35 industrialized countries despite having the largest econ­ omy in the world. More than 1 in 5 children in America (21.1%) were living in poverty in 2014, compared with 13.5% of people ages 18 to 64 years and 10% of those aged 65 years and older. Nearly 1 in 4 children younger than the age of 5 years (23.8%) are poor during some of the years of greatest brain development. Seventy percent of the 15.5 million poor children in America were children of color— who already constitute most of our nation’s youngest children and will be the majority of all the chil­ dren in our nation by 2020.

Poverty hurts children, creates opportunity gaps that can last a lifetime, and hurts the nation’s economy. The toxic stress of early poverty stunts children’s emotional and physical development and increases the likelihood of

poor academic achievement and dropping out of high school, which then increases the likelihood of unemploy­ ment, economic hardship, and involvement in the criminal justice system as an adult. These effects cost the nation at least half a trillion dollars a year in lost productivity and increased health and crime costs. Letting a fifth of our children grow up poor prevents them from having equal opportunities to succeed in life and robs the nation of their future contributions.

There is something we can do. We know antipoverty programs can reduce child poverty and promote opportu­ nity. For example, children with access to the Supple­ mental Nutrition Assistance Program are more likely to finish high school and are less likely to experience obesity, stunted growth, or heart disease as adults. Children in fam­ ilies who benefit from the Earned Income Tax Credit have higher scores on reading and math tests, are more likely to go on to college, and have higher earnings as adults. Hous­ ing vouchers can help families move from areas of concen­ trated poverty to lower poverty neighborhoods and children who move before age 13 years have higher earn­ ings as young adults. In 2014 tax credits and other safety net programs reduced child poverty by 40%. For the first time, the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) recent report, Ending Child Poverty Now,1 showed that by investing in existing programs and policies that we know increase employment, make work pay, and ensure children’s basic needs are met, the nation could reduce child poverty by 60% and lift 6.6 million children, a half a million of them extremely poor, out of poverty. It could reduce poverty among black children, who suffer the highest child poverty rates, 72% poor and near-poor. Substantial prog­ ress in reducing child poverty has been made over the past 50 years, despite worsening income inequality and increased unemployment and low-wage work. Child poverty decreased over a third from 1967 to 2012, when in­ come from in-kind benefits like nutrition and housing assistance and tax credits are counted. Yet millions of chil­ dren remain poor even after taking into account federal safety net programs because good jobs are still too scarce and safety net programs are stretched far too thin.

For the report CDF contracted with the Urban Institute to estimate the effect on child poverty if the nation invested

Academic Pediatrics © 2016 Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of Academic Pediatric S6 Association

Volume 16, Number 3S April 2016

academ ic Pediatrics Ending Childhood Poverty in America S7

more in proven poverty reduction strategies. CDF targeted changes in 9 existing programs and policies and found reducing child poverty 60% with these improvements was estimated to cost $77.2 billion in 2010, only 2% of US government spending that year, 0.5% of the 2010 US gross domestic product, and 15% of the estimated $500 billion the nation spends every year for the costs of children growing up poor. By reducing child poverty now the nation would reduce these children’s chances of becoming poor adults and reduce child poverty in the next generation.

Our nation can easily afford it. There are multiple ways to increase investments in children without increasing the deficit, from reducing military spending— the United States accounts for less than 5% of the world’s population but 37% of the world’s military spending— to closing tax breaks and loopholes that cost the nation hundreds of bil­

lions of dollars while fueling the nation’s alarming income and wealth gaps. As the wealthy and powerful nation we are, it is way past time we commit to ensuring all children’s basic needs are met. Solutions to child poverty in our rich nation already exist if we are willing to invest in them. We must create that public will. It will take all of us working together. Pediatricians lend such a powerful respected advocacy voice for ending child poverty now. And this special issue of Academic Pediatrics on child poverty forcefully reinforces the why and how for acting now. Children like Sarah and Bryce cannot wait.

Reference I . Children’s Defense Fund. Ending Child Poverty Now. Available at:

http://www.childrensdefense.org/library/PovertyReport/EndingChild PovertyNow.html. Accessed February 20, 2016.

©2016 Elsevier