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Census Data Show Poverty Is a Policy Choice
The substantial weakening of welfare state programs that had protected families from economic deprivation in 2021 resulted in poverty increases across all major racial and ethnic groups last year.
Sep 13, 2023
Economic relief measures enacted in response to the pandemic strengthened the U.S. social safety net and made a historic dent on poverty in 2021. New Census Bureau data show that the expiration of these key programs caused a significant increase in poverty last year, with the number of children in poverty more than doubling.
Bold policy initiatives such as economic impact/stimulus payments and the expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) helped to shelter millions of people from poverty during a time of social and economic uncertainty at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. For example, the Census Bureau’s most accurate measure of poverty—the Supplemental Poverty Measure—showed that poverty declined by more than 30% between 2019 and 2021, reaching a historic low of 7.8% in 2021. During the same three-year period, child poverty declined by more than half, reaching a historic low of 5.2% in 2021. Importantly, gains during this period were observed across all racial and ethnic groups.
New poverty data for 2022 show that all these gains in poverty reduction have now disappeared. More than 40 million people in 2022 fell below the poverty line, an increase of over 15 million (see Figure A). The substantial weakening of welfare state programs that had protected families from economic deprivation in 2021 resulted in poverty increases across all major racial and ethnic groups last year, further deepening the disadvantages of historically marginalized individuals and families.
Families with children were disproportionately affected by the expiration of the enhanced Child Tax Credit and other relief measures. The supplemental child poverty rate more than doubled between 2021 and 2022, marking a significant regression in child welfare with nearly 9 million children falling below the poverty line. In 2021, the expanded CTC had helped lift close to 3 million children from poverty. In 2022, the expiration of the CTC and other economic security initiatives meant that over 5 million more children were counted as poor relative to the year before. Poverty also continued to affect children of color unevenly, with Black, Hispanic, and American Indian and Alaska Native child poverty rates more than twice as high as their white, non-Hispanic peers.
To isolate the role of government benefits and taxes in reducing poverty, Figure B shows the number of people in poverty on a pre- and post-tax-and-benefit basis. There was essentially no change in overall poverty on a pre-tax basis, with the number of people in poverty hovering between 78.2 to 78.4 million. In contrast, post-tax-and-benefit poverty counts rose sharply between 2021 and 2022, in line with the removal of the expanded CTC and economic impact payments.
Figure B also demonstrates that rising prices played little-to-no role in the large increase in poverty. While high inflation curtailed many families’ incomes in 2022, labor market gains completely offset inflation at the bottom of the income distribution, as household pre-tax incomes through the bottom 30th percentile changed little between 2021 and 2022. Overall pre-tax poverty did not change last year, and poverty only increased using a broader measure of economic hardship that includes post-tax income.
There is also reason to think that the magnitude of the poverty increase was substantially larger than these figures suggest. Census models estimating the mechanical reduction in poverty due to the Child Tax Credit significantly understate the size of payments received by families near poverty thresholds in 2021. As a result, poverty in 2021 may have been lower than we thought, raising the measured magnitude of the poverty increase in 2022.
Although the strong labor market of 2023 will surely help to improve living standards and reduce poverty, it will nevertheless fall short of undoing the damage of letting key social assistance programs expire. Today’s data indicating a sharp increase in 2022 reveal how much poverty the country tolerates is a policy choice.
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US Child Poverty Rate More Than Doubled in 2022 Thanks to Manchin and GOP
"Joe Manchin's legacy includes artificially manufacturing child poverty for no reason other than his callous disregard for human beings," said the Debt Collective following the release of new Census data.
Sep 12, 2023
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and congressional Republicans faced fresh backlash on Tuesday after the U.S. Census Bureau released
new data showing that the nation's child poverty rate more than doubled in 2022 compared to the previous year, thanks in large part to the expiration of the boosted Child Tax Credit.
The expanded CTC, an American Rescue Plan (ARP) policy that sent eligible families up to $300 per month for each child and eliminated the original CTC's regressive phase-in, helped push the U.S. child poverty rate to a record low of 5.2% in 2021.
But the program expired at the end of that year after Manchin (D-W.Va.), who supported the ARP, opposed an extension, baselessly claiming that some parents would use the money on drugs instead of their children. (Survey data showed that most families, including those in West Virginia, used the money to buy food and help with rent, along with other essentials.)
"Joe Manchin's legacy includes artificially manufacturing child poverty for no reason other than his callous disregard for human beings," the Debt Collective wrote on social media.
Congressional Republicans, who unanimously opposed the ARP, also rejected calls to support an extension of the boosted CTC, part of a broader pandemic-era safety net that is now collapsing.
The result of the program's expiration, as predicted, was a devastating surge in child poverty. According to the new Census Bureau data, the child poverty rate rose to 12.4% in 2022—the largest single-year increase on record.
The overall U.S. poverty rate also increased, rising from 7.8% in 2021 to 12.4% last year. More than 37 million people in the U.S. lived in poverty in 2022, the Census Bureau said.
"Today's stunning rise in poverty is the direct result of policy choices—including Congress' decision to allow the successful Child Tax Credit expansion to expire," said Sharon Parrott, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "Policymakers should expand the Child Tax Credit this year and reverse this troubling trend."
If Congress had kept the expanded CTC in place last year, Parrott noted, 3 million additional kids would have been kept out of poverty, "preventing more than half of the 5.2 million increase in the number of children in poverty last year."
"The child poverty rate would have been about 8.4% rather than 12.4%," Parrott said.
Elise Gould and Ismael Cid-Martinez of the Economic Policy Institute echoed Parrott's assessment, saying in a statement that "if policymakers were willing to maintain the pandemic-era CTC expansions, a much smaller share of children would be living in poverty."
"More ambitious—but economically sustainable—expansions of our generally stingy welfare state could essentially eliminate poverty completely," they added. "We know this vision isn't politically realistic in the short run, but the policy lessons of 2020 and 2021 should not be lost with today's report."
In his
response to the new data, President Joe Biden placed the blame for the child poverty increase entirely on Republican lawmakers, not mentioning that Manchin's opposition was ultimately decisive in the evenly divided Senate in 2021.
"Today's Census report shows the dire consequences of congressional Republicans' refusal to extend the enhanced Child Tax Credit, even as they advance costly corporate tax cuts," Biden said. "We cut child poverty by nearly half to record lows for all children in this nation largely by expanding the Child Tax Credit. Last year, Congressional Republicans insisted on raising taxes on families with children. The rise reported today in child poverty is no accident—it is the result of a deliberate policy choice congressional Republicans made to block help for families with children while advancing massive tax cuts for the wealthiest and largest corporations."
Shortly after the Census Bureau published its data, Semafor reporter Joseph Zeballos-Roig asked Manchin whether he's had second thoughts about opposing an extension of the CTC boost now that its expiration has produced a record increase in child poverty.
"It's deeper than that, we all have to do our part," Manchin replied. "The federal government can't run everything."
The West Virginia senator said he had yet to see the new poverty figures.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) said in a statement that the new Census data "is just completely heartbreaking and deeply disappointing."
"It's also a specific choice," Fetterman added. "A spike in child poverty like this didn't need to happen. Congress had the chance to extend these programs that would keep our children fed and boost working families out of poverty. But it didn't. It's shameful. In the richest country in the world, no child should have to go through this. And now it's on us to fix this problem that shouldn't have been created in the first place."
This story has been updated to include a statement from Sen. John Fetterman.
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As GOP Wages 'Morally Appalling' War on Food Aid, Data Shows 35% Rise in Hunger
"No one should be shocked that when the government takes away food, as well as money to buy food, hunger increases."
Aug 02, 2023
Data recently published by the U.S. Census Bureau shows that more than 27 million people across the country didn't have enough food to eat during a one-week period in late June and early July, a 35% increase over the same period in 2021.
Joel Berg, the CEO of Hunger Free America, said in a statement Wednesday that the surge in food insecurity was likely caused by a combination of elevated costs and the expiration of benefits enacted during the coronavirus pandemic, such as the expanded child tax credit.
Berg also pointed to congressional Republicans' ongoing attacks on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. In May, House Republicans secured a deal with President Joe Biden to impose new work requirements on older adults receiving federal food aid—a move that experts say will put 750,000 people at risk of losing benefits.
The White House-GOP deal came months after SNAP benefit enhancements implemented during the pandemic expired, slashing aid for tens of millions of people. Food banks across the country subsequently reported a surge in demand, according to a survey by Feeding America.
"No one should be shocked that when the government takes away food, as well as money to buy food, hunger increases," Berg said. "Given that the gaps between wages and living costs are still so great that tens of millions of Americans can't afford enough food, the mass deprivation in the midst of an overall recovery is one key reason why the U.S. public still tells pollsters they have a negative view of the U.S. economy."
"This new data should be a wake-up call for elected officials at the national, state, and local levels that they need to take bold, concrete actions to raise wages, make quality housing and childcare more affordable, and strengthen—not cut—the food safety net," Berg added. "The ongoing push by key congressional conservatives to further slash these programs is both morally appalling and economically counterproductive."
"The mass deprivation in the midst of an overall recovery is one key reason why the U.S. public still tells pollsters they have a negative view of the U.S. economy."
Members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus are reportedly pushing for additional SNAP benefit restrictions as part of the annual farm bill, which authorizes the critical and effective anti-hunger program.
In addition to targeting SNAP, House Republicans are also proposing cuts to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) in their fiscal year 2024 agriculture appropriations bill.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated last week that if the House GOP's bill becomes law, "650,000 to 750,000 eligible people—primarily toddlers, preschoolers, and postpartum adults—would be turned away" from WIC and an additional 4.6 million would face benefit cuts.
House Republicans failed to pass the agriculture bill last week before leaving town for August recess.
In a scathing statement, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said that Republicans couldn't rally sufficient GOP support for the measure "because it was not extreme and dangerous enough."
"Apparently—for House Republicans—it did not take enough food out of the mouths of women and children, it did not prevent enough farmers from buying homes and accessing clean water, it did not prevent enough rural homes from accessing the internet, it did not prevent enough women from accessing an abortion, and it did not protect enough billionaires and corporations from paying their taxes," DeLauro added.
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