Posts by First Focus
Congress is Taking Action to Ensure We Cut Child Poverty in Half

House and Senate Democrats are poised to re-introduce the Child Poverty Reduction Act tomorrow. Led by Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL) and Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), the bill would establish a national target to reduce the number of children living in poverty in the U.S. by one-half in 10 years. With all of the action taken recently on reducing child poverty, this bill will hold our leaders accountable to action.

No child in the world’s wealthiest nation should go to bed hungry or be deprived of clean air or be without the opportunities that come from having a safe, affordable place to call home.

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Congress holds 3 hearings on child poverty in first 3 months of 2020

In the past six weeks, the House of Representatives has made child poverty a clear priority. Hearings have been called by the Oversight, Appropriations, and Ways & Means committees with clear momentum towards the goal of ending child poverty in the United States. Below, you will find videos from each of these hearings and links to the written testimony of the witnesses.

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Going Global: International Inspiration to Tackle US Child Poverty

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Mathematics (NASEM) in Washington, DC recently released A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty, declared the most important report on child poverty in years. The research should be widely-covered for its most telling revelations about child poverty in America in 2019: that an unrestricted free-market economy characterized by low-wage employment, combined with work requirements and sanctions, were not effective over time at reducing the percentage of American children living below the poverty line.

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Addressing Diaper Need and Lifting Children out of Poverty

Known as “diaper need,” this challenge of getting enough diapers is an often-hidden consequence of poverty and low wages. Infants and toddlers require eight to 12 diapers each day during their first few years. Procuring a sufficient supply of diapers costs families between $70 and $80 each month. While not as well known as food insecurity or homelessness, diaper need negatively impacts children’s health, parents’ mental well-being and families’ economic stability.

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If you want to help kids, don’t impose work tests on programs that meet their basic needs.

Work requirements, in other words, pose enormous hurdles to getting assistance in the first place, as well as challenges for maintaining assistance once it has begun. For parents of young children, the challenges are especially large, and the risks of failure are high. Given these factors, it should be no surprise that a landmark National Academy of Sciences report on child poverty recently concluded that “work requirements are at least as likely to increase as to decrease [child] poverty.”  

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Child Poverty Should Be a National Outrage

Whether you have children or not, it’s easy to get caught up in back-to-school season at this time of year. We all feel a sense of purpose as children return to the classroom, confident that we are preparing them to be intelligent, thinking members of society, ready to find work when they graduate with a diploma or degree.

Our commitment to our children’s minds is in the right place, but our leaders are failing their bodies and even those very brains, too. When we don’t give children a healthy start in life — even from the womb — and sustain them through their physical and intellectual growing years, we might not see the effects right away, but we will surely pay for it more later.

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First Focus