#child poverty

[reasonsforhope]

"The state, which has long ranked worst in the US for child wellbeing, became the first and only in the country to offer free childcare to a majority of families

There was a moment, just before the pandemic, when Lisset Sanchez thought she might have to drop out of college because the cost of keeping her three children in daycare was just too much.

Even with support from the state, she and her husband were paying $800 a month – about half of what Sanchez and her husband paid for their mortgage in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

But during the pandemic, that cost went down to $0. And Sanchez was not only able to finish college, but enroll in nursing school. With a scholarship that covered her tuition and free childcare, Sanchez could afford to commute to school, buy groceries for her growing family – even after she had two more children – and pay down the family’s mortgage and car loan.

“We are a one-income household,” said Sanchez, whose husband works while she is in school. Having free childcare “did help tremendously”.

...Three years ago, New Mexico became the first state in the nation to offer free childcare to a majority of families. The United States has no federal, universal childcare – and ranks 40th on a Unicef ranking of 41 high-income countries’ childcare policies, while maintaining some of the highest childcare costs in the world. Expanding on pandemic-era assistance, New Mexico made childcare free for families earning up to 400% of the federal poverty level, or about $124,000 for a family of four. That meant about half of New Mexican children now qualified.

In one of the poorest states in the nation, where the median household income is half that and childcare costs for two children could take up 80% of a family’s income, the impact was powerful. The state, which had long ranked worst in the nation for child wellbeing, saw its poverty rate begin to fall.

As the state simultaneously raised wages for childcare workers, and became the first to base its subsidy reimbursement rates on the actual cost of providing such care, early childhood educators were also raised out of poverty. In 2020, 27.4% of childcare providers – often women of color – were living in poverty. By 2024, that number had fallen to 16%.

During the state’s recent legislative session, lawmakers approved a “historic” increase in funding for education, including early childhood education, that might improve those numbers even further...

When now-governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced her candidacy in late 2016, she emphasized her desire to address the state’s low child wellbeing rating. And when she took office in January 2018, she described her aim to have a “moonshot for education”: major investments in education across the state, from early childhood through college.

That led to her opening the state’s early childhood education and care department in 2019 – and tapping Groginksy, who had overseen efforts to improve early childhood policies in Washington DC, to run it. Then, in 2020, Lujan Grisham threw her support behind a bill in the state legislature that would establish an Early Childhood Trust Fund: by investing $300m – plus budget surpluses each year, largely from oil and gas revenue – the state hoped to distribute a percentage to fund early childhood education each year.

But then, just weeks after the trust fund was established, the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic.

“Covid created a really enormous moment for childcare,” said Heinz. “We had somewhat of a national reckoning about the fact that we don’t have a workforce if we don’t have childcare.”

As federal funding flooded into New Mexico, the state directed millions of dollars toward childcare, including by boosting pay for entry-level childcare providers to $15 an hour, expanding eligibility for free childcare to families making 400% of the poverty level, and becoming the first state in the nation to set childcare subsidy rates at the true cost of delivering care.

As pandemic-era relief funding dried up in 2022, the governor and Democratic lawmakers proposed another way to generate funds for childcare – directing a portion of the state’s Land Grant Permanent Fund to early childhood education and care. Like the Early Childhood Trust Fund, the permanent fund – which was established when New Mexico became a state – was funded by taxes on fossil fuel revenues. That November, 70% of New Mexican voters approved a constitutional amendment directing 1.25% of the fund to early childhood programs.

By then, the Early Childhood Trust Fund had grown exponentially – due to the boom in oil and gas prices. Beginning with $300m in 2020, the fund had swollen to over $9bn by the end of 2024...

New Mexico has long had one of the highest “official poverty rates” in the nation.

But using a metric that accounts for social safety net programs – like universal childcare – that’s slowly shifting. According to “supplemental poverty” data, 17.1% of New Mexicans fell below the federal “supplemental” poverty line from 2013 to 2015 (a metric that takes into account cost of living and social supports) – making it the fifth poorest state in the nation by that measure. But today, that number has fallen to 10.9%, one of the biggest changes in the country, amounting to 120,000 fewer New Mexicans living in poverty.

New Mexico’s child wellbeing ranking – which is based heavily on “official poverty” rankings – probably won’t budge, says Heinz because “the amount of money coming into households, that they have to run their budget, remains very low.

“However, the thing New Mexico has done that’s fairly tremendous, I think, is around families not having to have as much money going out,” she said.

During the recent legislative session, lawmakers deepened their investments in early childhood education even further, approving a 21.6% increase of $170m for education programs – including early childhood education. However, other legislation that advocates had hoped might pass stalled in the legislature, including a bill to require businesses to offer paid family medical leave...

In her budget recommendations, Lujan Grisham asked the state to up its commitment to early childhood policies, by raising the wage floor for childcare workers to $18 an hour and establishing a career lattice for them. Because of that, Gonzalez has been able to start working on her associate’s in childhood education at Central New Mexico Community College where her tuition is waived. The governor also backed a house bill that will increase the amount of money distributed annually from the Early Childhood Trust Fund – since its dramatic growth due to oil and gas revenues.

Although funding childcare through the Land Grant Permanent Fund is unique to New Mexico – and a handful of other states with permanent funds, like Alaska, Texas and North Dakota – Heinz says the Early Childhood Trust fund “holds interesting lessons for other states” about investing a percentage of revenues into early childhood programs.

In New Mexico, those revenues come largely from oil and gas, but New Mexico Voices for Children has put forth recommendations about how the state can continue funding childcare while transitioning away from fossil fuels, largely by raising taxes on the state’s wealthiest earners. Although other states have not yet followed in New Mexico’s footsteps, a growing number are making strides to offer free pre-K to a majority of their residents.

Heinz cautions that change won’t occur overnight. “What New Mexico is trying to do here is play a very long game. And so I am not without worry that people might give it five years, and it’s been almost five years now, and then say, where are the results? Why is everything not better?” she said. “This is generational change” that New Mexico is only just beginning to witness as the first children who were recipients of universal childcare start school."

-via The Guardian, April 11, 2025

[politijohn]

Source

Source

[political-us]

“When a parent of a child under the age of 18 dies, that child receives survivor benefits from that parent’s social security account….. Every child receiving benefits from social security wishes they weren’t.”

[heterorealism]

[truth-has-a-liberal-bias]

The House voted Wednesday night to pass a $78 billion tax package that includes an expansion of the child tax credit, sending it to the Senate, where its path is uncertain. The Republican-led House passed the bipartisan measure 357-70...

...

It now heads to the Senate, where it will need at least 60 votes to advance.

Given the margin in the House, and the scope of the bipartisan support, that might not seem like much of a challenge, but one GOP senator summarized a core problem. NBC News also reported:

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, cast doubt Wednesday on passing a bipartisan tax bill, saying it could make President Joe Biden “look good” and improve Democrats’ chances of holding the White House in the 2024 election. Grassley said re-electing Biden could hurt Republican hopes of extending Trump-era tax cuts.

...

The problem is not that the Iowa Republican opposes the underlying legislation; the problem is that his principal concern is avoiding governing successes that might make President Joe Biden “look good” in an election year.

The longtime GOP senator could put country over party, but by his own admission, he’s reluctant to do so. To hear Grassley tell it, reducing child poverty is fine, but helping the Republican Party’s electoral strategies is better. [...]

[porterdavis]

Poverty is a policy choice

[enbycrip]

Thing to remember if you are writing anything involving class and working class people, including game design: poverty is a major cause of AND a major result of disability and chronic illness.

If you write something where every working class person, every person who comes from a working class background, or every poor person, is healthy and physically strong, and just as much or more so if you bake that into a game system by giving people from those backgrounds high Health or Strength stats, you are making an active *choice* to erase a substantial part of the experience of and results of poverty.

Disabled people exist *everywhere*. In every setting - even when there’s magical healing or nanobots or whatever, frankly, erasure of disabled people and the experience of disability is an active narrative choice to erase us. So we *certainly* exist in *every* real world present-day and historical setting, and the fact that you don’t think so is due to active cultural erasure of disabled people and the experience of disability.

While disability is *absolutely* present in every strata of society, the experiences of disability and poverty are deeply and inherently entwined. Given that the vast majority of people are workers, and primarily physical workers throughout history - and if you don’t think disability massively impairs your ability to do call centre work, let alone food service, care work, retail work, or most of the other low-paid jobs in our current service economy, even if they are not habitually classified as heavy physical work, you need to massively expand your understanding of what disability actually is.

Poverty is generational in all sorts of ways, but one of them is that gestational and childhood poverty affects a person for their entire life. There are so many illnesses that one is predisposed to by inadequate nutrition during gestation and childhood, or by environmental pollution during those times (most likely in poverty-stricken areas). Disability and illness in parents and family members so often sees young children go without essentials and older ones forced into forgoing education and opportunities so they can care for family members or enter paid work. It’s a generational cycle that has held depressingly true in urban and rural areas, and that’s before even considering the impact of genetic illnesses and predisposition to illnesses.

Not to mention that a great deal of neurodivergence is incredibly disabling in every strata of society - yes, bits of it can be very advantageous in certain places, jobs, roles and positions, but the *universality* of punishment for not intuiting the subtle social rules of place and social environment again and again means most ND folk end up with a massive burden of trauma by adulthood. On top of the poverty that means in loss of access to paid work and other opportunities, trauma is incredibly shitty for your health.

Yeah; it might not be “fun” to write about or depict. But by failing to do so you are actively perpetuating the idea that the class system, whatever it is, is “just”. That poorest people do the jobs they do because they are “best suited for them” instead of because of societal inequality and sheer *bad fortune* without safety nets to catch people. It is very much worth doing the work to put it in.

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

Honestly, this country is a disgrace. No child should be in the situation where they don't have enough to eat, or can't access education due to lack of money.

At my current place, we also give away basic stationery, period products etc to students in need. It does put you at a disadvantage when you're the kid in the class who can't afford £10 for a calculator.

There are schools doing laundry for kids, providing them with clothes, even bedding in some cases.

But schools are increasingly running short on money (as are teachers themselves)- having schools as a sort of social safety net of last resort is a situation that's going to fall apart at some point, unless schools get proper funding.

But wouldn't it be better to ensure students aren't in this situation in the first place?

[odinsblog]

This new statistic is just completely heartbreaking and deeply disappointing. It's also a specific choice. 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.

—John Fetterman, on the new child poverty statistics caused by allowing pandemic response programs to expire

[reasonsforhope]

Flint, Michigan, has one of the [United States]'s highest rates of child poverty — something that got a lot of attention during the city's lead water crisis a decade ago. And a pediatrician who helped expose that lead problem has now launched a first-of-its-kind move to tackle poverty: giving every new mother $7,500 in cash aid over a year.

A baby's first year is crucial for development. It's also a time of peak poverty.

Flint's new cash transfer program, Rx Kids, starts during pregnancy. The first payment is $1,500 to encourage prenatal care. After delivery, mothers will get $500 a month over the baby's first year.

"What happens in that first year of life can really portend your entire life course trajectory. Your brain literally doubles in size in the first 12 months," says Hanna-Attisha, who's also a public health professor at Michigan State University.

A baby's birth is also a peak time for poverty. Being pregnant can force women to cut back hours or even lose a job. Then comes the double whammy cost of child care.

Research has found that stress from childhood poverty can harm a person's physical and mental health, brain development and performance in school. Infants and toddlers are more likely than older children to be put into foster care, for reasons that advocates say conflate neglect with poverty.

In Flint, where the child poverty rate is more than 50%, Hanna-Attisha says new moms are in a bind. "We just had a baby miss their 4-day-old appointment because mom had to go back to work at four days," she says...

Benefits of Cash Aid

Studies have found such payments reduce financial hardship and food insecurity and improve mental and physical health for both mothers and children.

The U.S. got a short-lived taste of that in 2021. Congress temporarily expanded the child tax credit, boosting payments and also sending them to the poorest families who had been excluded because they didn't make enough to qualify for the credit. Research found that families mostly spent the money on basic needs. The bigger tax credit improved families' finances and briefly cut the country's child poverty rate nearly in half.

"We saw food hardship dropped to the lowest level ever," Shaefer says. "And we saw credit scores actually go to the highest that they'd ever been in at the end of 2021."

Critics worried that the expanded credit would lead people to work less, but there was little evidence of that. Some said they used the extra money for child care so they could go to work.

As cash assistance in Flint ramps up, Shaefer will be tracking not just its impact on financial well-being, but how it affects the roughly 1,200 babies born in the city each year.

"We're going to see if expectant moms route into prenatal care earlier," he says. "Are they able to go more? And then we'll be able to look at birth outcomes," including birth weight and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admissions.

Since the pandemic, dozens of cash aid pilots have popped up across the nation. But unlike them, Rx Kids is not limited to lower-income households. It's universal, which means every new mom will get the same amount of money. "You pit people against each other when you draw that line in the sand and say, 'You don't need this, and you do,' " Shaefer says. It can also stigmatize families who get the aid, he says, as happened with traditional welfare...

So far, there's more than $43 million to keep the program going for three years. Funders include foundations, health insurance companies and the state of Michigan, which allocated a small part of its federal cash aid, known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

Money can buy more time for bonding with a baby

Alana Turner can't believe her luck with Flint's new cash benefits. "I was just shocked because of the timing of it all," she says.

Turner is due soon with her second child, a girl. She lives with her aunt and her 4-year-old son, Ace. After he was born, her car broke down and she was seriously cash-strapped, negotiating over bill payments. This time, she hopes she won't have to choose between basic needs.

"Like, I shouldn't have to think about choosing between are the lights going to be on or am I going to make sure the car brakes are good," she says...

But since she'll be getting an unexpected $7,500 over the next year, Turner has a new goal. With her first child, she was back on the job in less than six weeks. Now, she hopes she'll be able to slow down and spend more time with her daughter.

"I don't want to sacrifice the time with my newborn like I had to for my son, if I don't have to," she says."

-via NPR, March 12, 2024

[possiblyunhinged]

This all looked rather promising, until you read that only SIX LABOUR MPs supported a Green Party motion to support the rollout of free school meals to ALL primary school children in state schools. I guess why not make vulnerable children growing up feel MORE othered...​

Additionally, Labour's steadfast refusal to abolish the two-child benefit cap continues to push families deeper into poverty, affecting over 1.5 million children.​ I can't read about this shit and not weep anymore. Shame kills people, and we're supporting a culture that actively pushes it on children.

We KNOW the mental health implications of growing up in poverty, and yet Labour are doing FUCK ALL about it. Yet, are bemoaning the 1 in 7 young people who can't work? Work on a god damn fucking solution then. Work on better mental health care. Work to create a society where working doesn't just mean they end up in a cycle of forever chasing their tell with bills, but can afford to LIVE.

In other news, my love for Diane Abbott is, as always, endless.

[mask131]

Here is the video I just saw that echoed this post I reblogged earlier. A simple test: can you get anti-abortion protesters to sign a petition against child hunger? It gives very interesting results. "For the children". Yeah yeah, sure...

[porterdavis]

Child poverty is a policy choice, full stop.

[drafty-castle]

Eloquently put.

[eaglesnick]

Broken Britain: Labour’s Policy

Homelessness

According to Shelter 109,000 households are homeless in temporary accommodation - up 10% in a year -  including 142,490 children – up 14% in a year.

Labour does NOT include ending homelessness in Keir Starmer’s “Five Missions" that are at the centre of his party's promise to voters.

Child Poverty

4.3 million children were living in poverty in the UK during the period 2022/23 – 30% of ALL the nations children.

Labour does NOT include ending child poverty in Keir Starmer's “Five Missions"

Food Banks

Nearly 3 million emergency food parcels were distributed by food banks between April 2022 and April 2023, 760,00 people using food banks for the first time. The number of children in "material deprivation" wherein families cannot afford to feed themselves was 1.9 million.

Labour does NOT include ending    poverty in Keir Starmer's “Five Missions"

Water Pollution

According to the Environment Agency there were 3.6 million hours of spills of raw sewage into Britain’s waterways and beaches compared to 1.75 million hours in 2022. Not a single river in England is now rated as healthy.

Labour does NOT include environmental cleanup and protection in Keir Starmer's “Five Missions"

Social Care of the Elderly

Chronic under-funding, severe staff shortages and a growing elderly population has brought the social care sector to crisis point and on the verge of collapse. According to Age UK 2.6 million people over 50 years of age have unmet social care needs, while many thousands languish in hospital for lack of a social care plan for living in their own homes.

Labour does NOT include social care reform   in Keir Starmer's “Five Missions"

The Labour Party’s number one priority isn’t to help the poor, the homeless, the elderly or to protect the environment. It is to secure:

…“the "highest sustained growth" in the G7 group of rich nations, made up of the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan, by the end of Labour's first term.” 

Strangely enough within Sunak’s “five promises” he emphasizes growing the economy above all else. Its all very well “growing the economy", but WHO are we growing the economy for, and who will benefit from any future growth?

After 14 years of Tory government the poor have become steadily worse off while the rich have prospered. The continued redistribution of the nation's wealth from poor to rich is a national scandal, leading to the UK “having some of the highest levels of inequality in Europe.”  Unfortunately, even if Labour should win the next election, this inequality is likely to continue.