1-182 - Reducing Child Poverty by Half in 10 Years: A National Academies Report

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

The U.S. has higher child poverty rates than nearly all other rich nations. Using the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) threshold for a family of four, the U.S. Census Bureau counted over 11 million U.S. children—nearly one sixth of all our children – living in families with incomes in 2016 that fell short of the poverty line. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) was charged by the U.S. Congress to focus on the specific objective of reducing the number of children living in poverty by half within 10 years. An ad hoc committee of experts on child poverty from multiple disciplines was appointed by the NASEM to carry out this charge. We will present the findings in a number of important areas that we were asked by the NASEM to address.
The committee chair will chair the session and will provide a brief overview of the committee’s charge and its approach to responding to this charge. The first presenter will present the available evidence on the nature, causes and consequences of child poverty in the US. The second presenter will present original analyses estimating the impact of each of 10 different individual policy changes on reducing child poverty. The third presenter will present analyses estimating the impact of different combinations of policy changes on child poverty reduction. And finally, the fourth presenter will present promising strategies whose impacts could not be rigorously estimated and contextual factors that may moderate the impact of proposed policies on child poverty reduction.

Sub Unit

• Diversity, Equity & Social Justice

Chair

• Greg Duncan, University of California, Irvine

Individual Presentations

• The Definition of Child Poverty and the Consequences of Poverty on Child Outcomes - Presenting Author: Benard Dreyer, New York University School of Medicine; Non-Presenting Author: Vonnie McLoyd, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Non-Presenting Author: Janet Currie, Princeton University

• Simulating Expansions of Individual Anti-Poverty Programs Using Urban Institute's TRIM3 Model - Presenting Author: Janet Currie, Princeton University; Non-Presenting Author: Robert Moffitt, Johns Hopkins University

• Packaging Polices to Meet Multiple Goals - Presenting Author: Timothy Smeeding, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Non-Presenting Author: Irwin Garfinkel, Columbia University; Non-Presenting Author: Hilary Hoynes, University of California, Berkeley

• Contextual Factors that Influence the Effects of Anti-Poverty Policies and Programs - Presenting Author: Lawrence J. Aber, New York University; Non-Presenting Author: Cynthia Osborne, University of Texas at Austin