Congress must reduce child poverty and strengthen families to help children thrive

OPINION:

Child poverty is a moral emergency. Poverty exacts tremendous suffering from our youngest citizens —causing massive gaps in cognitive learning, increasing risks of hunger and homelessness, and raising the likelihood of lower lifetime earnings and poverty as an adult.

Due to strong federal investment by Democrats and President Biden — especially the expanded Child Tax Credit — child poverty precipitously dropped by almost half between 2020 and 2021 - the lowest rate on record. In my home state of Illinois, child poverty plunged by 51% in 2021. We know that this record drop in child poverty reached the Black, brown, and rural children who are disproportionately likely to be poor.

Alarmingly, just one year after the Republican-led expiration of these poverty-lowering investments in workers and families, the child poverty rate more than doubled, causing the biggest one-year increase in poverty we’ve ever seen. This doubling of child poverty mirrors the wide array of other indicators of the hardships that families experience — food insecurity, hunger, housing instability, homelessness, debt, or having the heat turned off.

The progress Democrats made in 2021 shows that we can slash child poverty when we have the political will to act. Congress should take immediate action to eliminate child poverty and reduce adversity for poor children by providing stability and support to their families.

Families need stability before parents can be reliable workers, and reliable workers need quality jobs to escape poverty. The Republican inaction to address child poverty leaves children suffering and weakens our nation.

We should restore the Child Tax Credit this year to give families quick relief. We should use every tool in our toolbox to address the child care crisis — direct assistance to parents and child care providers, guaranteed assistance to states, and modernization of the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit back to 2021 where families could receive up to $8,000 in credit per year for their real child care costs — much better than the current maximum of $2,100. A recent study by the National Academy of Sciences is clear that a robust Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit reduces child poverty and increases parental employment and earnings — especially for African Americans, single parents, and mothers younger than 25.

We also should promote housing security so that workers and families have the stability needed for success — including via direct assistance, tax incentives to build affordable housing, and tax credits to help cost-burdened renters. Further, we should enact comprehensive paid family and medical leave, policies that our peer countries have demonstrated substantially increase workforce participation among women. Keeping parents connected to the workforce powers both family economic well-being and our national economic growth; each one percent increase in the overall workforce increases our national income by about $180 billion.

We should restore the evidence-based, career-pathway Health Profession Opportunity Grant (HPOG) program that Republicans refused to extend. HPOG improves educational opportunities for struggling workers so that they can access high-caliber, good-paying jobs. Workers need child care, a safe place to live, food to eat, reliable transportation, good education, and health care. If we want to support work, that’s where we need to start.

Every day we delay action, poverty poisons the future for millions of our children and for our nation.

Democrats stand ready to set an aggressive child poverty reduction target and hold ourselves accountable to restore income supports to strengthen families and cut child poverty. Every American relies on the federal government for help sometimes. These investments benefit us all. They make us the country we want to be, lifting the burdens from vulnerable families so that children can thrive.

• Rep. Danny K. Davis, Illinois Democrat, has represented the 7th Congressional District of Illinois since 1997. He serves on the House Committee on Ways and Means and is the Ranking Member of the Worker and Family Support Subcommittee. Rep. Davis co-leads the Congressional Caucus on Ethnic and Religious Freedom in Sri Lanka, Community Health Center Caucus, Predominantly Black Institutions Caucus, and Trauma Informed Care Caucus, and is a member of several additional Congressional Caucuses including the Congressional Black Caucus, the Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth, and the Second Chance Task Force.