Child Poverty Policy: What Research Shows About Programs That Work

Child poverty in the United States remains higher than in most comparable wealthy nations, despite decades of policy attention and significant public expenditure on programs serving low-income families with children. Research on the causes of child poverty, the effects of specific anti-poverty programs on family income and child wellbeing, and the long-term consequences of poverty experience in childhood has grown substantially and offers a basis for evaluating policy choices on their evidence rather than ideology. Measuring child poverty is more complex than it might appear. The official poverty measure, which has been used since the 1960s, compares gross cash income to a threshold originally derived from food expenditure estimates and has been widely criticized for failing to account for taxes, in-kind benefits, work expenses, and regional cost of living variation. The Supplemental Poverty Measure, developed by the Census Bureau with input from experts, incorporates these factors and produces a more comprehensive picture of economic hardship. Research using the Supplemental Poverty Measure finds that programs including food assistance, housing subsidies, and the Earned Income Tax Credit reduce measured poverty substantially, while the official measure does not capture these effects. The Earned Income Tax Credit is among the most studied and most evidence-supported anti-poverty programs in the United States. Research finds that the EITC increases employment among single parents, raises family income, reduces poverty, and produces significant positive effects on children's health, academic achievement, and long-term economic outcomes. Studies using quasi-experimental methods, including comparisons across states with different EITC supplement rates and comparisons of families on different sides of EITC phase-in thresholds, find consistent evidence of these effects. The EITC's work requirement, which limits benefits to families with earned income, is sometimes criticized for excluding the poorest families with no employment, but research on employment effects suggests the incentive structure has produced significant labor market participation among low-income parents. The Child Tax Credit, which was temporarily expanded in 2021 as part of pandemic relief legislation to provide monthly payments to families with children regardless of employment income, produced the most dramatic single-year reduction in child poverty in recent American history. Research on the expanded Child Tax Credit finds that child poverty rates fell from approximately 15 percent to approximately 12 percent between 2020 and 2021, with the largest reductions among Black and Latino children and children in single-parent families. Researchers attribute the reduction primarily to the expanded credit and its monthly delivery. When the expansion expired at the end of 2021, research documented a reversal of these gains, with child poverty rising substantially in 2022. Food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is the largest domestic nutrition program and reaches approximately 42 million people, many of them children. Research on SNAP benefits finds that they reduce food insecurity, improve child health outcomes, and are associated with better long-term educational and economic outcomes for children whose families receive them in early childhood. Longitudinal research exploiting variation in historical SNAP program access across counties finds that early childhood exposure to food assistance produces better health and economic outcomes decades later, suggesting long-term returns to this investment in child nutrition. Early childhood programs including Head Start and subsidized child care reduce the immediate economic burden on low-income families and contribute to child development outcomes as discussed in other research contexts. These programs function simultaneously as anti-poverty interventions that reduce family expenses and as developmental investments that improve children's long-term outcomes. Housing assistance through the Housing Choice Voucher program serves low-income families and is associated with significantly improved outcomes for children. Research using lottery-based assignment of housing vouchers finds that children whose families received vouchers and moved to lower-poverty neighborhoods showed significantly improved long-term outcomes including higher earnings in adulthood, higher college attendance rates, and lower rates of single parenthood. These findings suggest that where children grow up matters enormously for their long-term prospects and that housing policy can be a powerful instrument for improving outcomes across generations. The long-term effects of childhood poverty are well-documented by research tracing individuals across time. Children who experience poverty, particularly deep and persistent poverty in early childhood, show elevated rates of health problems, educational difficulties, behavioral challenges, and lower adult earnings. The costs of childhood poverty extend to the broader economy through reduced productivity, higher healthcare expenditure, and greater criminal justice involvement. Research estimating the economic cost of child poverty in the United States finds annual costs in the hundreds of billions of dollars, substantially exceeding the cost of programs that could significantly reduce child poverty rates. The research evidence points toward cash and near-cash income transfers, including the EITC and Child Tax Credit, and housing vouchers with residential mobility options as among the most cost-effective instruments for reducing child poverty and its long-term consequences. The challenge is not primarily one of evidence but of political will to sustain and expand programs that deliver meaningful reductions in the child poverty that research shows imposes enormous costs on the children it affects and on the society they grow up in.