What To Expect When Expecting a Family-Friendly Government

A moral panic over the sanctity of children has bubbled up to the highest levels of U.S. politics. From schoolboards to state legislatures, conservative leaders and activists are mobilizing against anything they see as imperiling a sufficiently wholesome upbringing. Their efforts aim to criminalize drag shows, forbid teachers from making references to sexual orientation, and ban whatever canonical works of 20th century literature they deem to have committed Thoughtcrimes.

But amid the indignation, there is little concern for the United States’ longstanding childhood poverty epidemic. This is a shame, because poverty, unlike being in the presence of cross-dressing, is known to cause children harm. And because we have a policy intervention proven to reduce child poverty without harassing a single middle school librarian.

As of 2019, the United States was one of five OECD countries where “more than 20% of children live in relative poverty.” There is a tendency in the American political machine to refer to poverty as abstraction, or glamorize it as a type of character-building adversity for which the afflicted will one day be grateful. But poverty is not a narrative device. It is a menace that exacts short- and long-term damage. Children in poverty are more likely to be hungry, ill, or obese, struggle academically, and exhibit emotional and behavioral issues – all of which have lifelong implications. Studies have found that children living near or below the federal poverty line suffer from stunted neurological development that manifests as early as the first few months of life. As noted by the University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Research and Poverty, these setbacks “affect school readiness even before children enter kindergarten” and “inhibit a child’s ability to learn [and] function socially.”

These are the true costs of a society unwilling to invest in the well-being of its young. The United States government spends less on child development and care than any developed economy. Of the 38 nations that make up the OECD, the U.S. trails everyone except Cyprus and Turkey in public spending on childcare (as a share of GDP). Governments support children by supporting the people who raise them, and universal paid leave and a robust national investment in childcare are hallmarks of most high-income countries. The United States is not among them. Of the 41 nations that comprise the OECD and the European Union, the United States is the only one that does not provide statutory paid parental leave to either parent.

Without publicly funded options, parents are left to find childcare on the private market, where the options are expensive. More or less prohibitively so. As expecting parents, my spouse and I will soon join the legions of Chicagoans who pay more for childcare than for housing. Our experience is typical. The Economic Policy Institute found that infant childcare in Illinois costs more than the average rent, and more than 20% of the average family income. According to the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) definition, “affordable” childcare should cost no more than 7% of a family’s income. Illinois is not an outlier. For median income families in all 50 states, the average cost of infant care exceeds the HHS’s affordability standard, and by a wide margin.

The private childcare market is expensive by any definition, but it’s also far from equitable. As of 2018, more than half of the American population live in a childcare desert. Unsurprisingly, Hispanic/Latino, rural, and low-income families were disproportionately likely to reside in a place with insufficient childcare options. This privation dramatically limits options for parents – and particularly mothers, who are more likely to be single parents and more likely to leave the workforce to assume primary caregiver responsibilities. It should be no surprise that 1.1 million women exited the U.S. labor force between February 2020 to January 2022, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It would be hard to overstate the pandemic’s role in exposing the U.S. childcare crisis. With families stretched to their breaking point, family-oriented policy emerged as a focal point of the Biden administration and the 117th Congress. The 2021 American Rescue Plan threw everyone a lifeline in the form of expanding the Child Tax Credit. The expanded credit increased the maximum benefit of $2,000 to $3,600 for each eligible child under the age of 6. It also broadened access to include 23 million families who previously were ineligible to receive the credit and distributed the credit through automatic monthly payments.

Above all, the expansion addressed the Child Tax Credit’s largest and most insidious design flaw. The original credit prohibited families whose incomes are too low from receiving the full credit. Families who earn between $2,500 and $30,000 a year receive less than those who make more than $30,000. Those who earn less than $2,500 receive no credit at all. The expansion made the full benefit available to all low-income families, ending the penalty originally imposed on those who need it the most.

The results for 2021 were staggering. The revamped Child Tax Credit reached more than 60 million children and reduced the monthly child poverty rate – a measurement developed by the Columbia University Center on Poverty and Social Policy that strives to provide “real-time estimates of the economic well-being of U.S. households” – by nearly 30%. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (which uses different metrics than the OECD), the 2021 childhood poverty rate dropped to 5.2%. A record low.

Opponents of the expanded credit argue that it would cause recipients to exit the workforce in droves. However, a study by researchers at Columbia University concluded that the policy “did not have negative short-term employment effects that offset its documented reductions in poverty and hardship.” In September 2022, President Biden called the Child Tax Credit expansion “one of the most effective programs we’ve ever seen.”

Unfortunately, despite its success, Congress failed to extend the expansion before it expired in December 2021. The expanded credit lapsed, leaving its predecessor behind and immediately thrusting millions of children back into poverty. Concerted efforts from advocacy groups and lobbying from the White House failed to gain traction in Congress, and 2022 passed without meaningful action to restore the expanded credit. It goes without saying that the prospects of reviving the credit in a time of split government are bleak.

I do not mean to suggest that the expanded tax credit is a panacea for the economic hardship families across the U.S. face. And there may be more targeted ways to address the need for equitable, affordable childcare (perhaps it would be useful to examine the national childcare subsidy plan that was, at one point in 2021, a part of the House spending bill). But the expanded Child Tax Credit nonetheless represented a long overdue investment in low- and middle-income families, and it undoubtedly improved lives. For anyone who is genuinely concerned about the lives of children, and parents, and the future of the United States, it felt like a good start.