Why America Has Been So Stingy In Fighting Child Poverty

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/02/22/1081373489/why-america-has-been-so-stingy-in-fighting-child-poverty

The failure of Washington to renew the enhanced Child Tax Credit continues a long tradition in America: Our welfare system has long spent generously on the old, but it has consistently skimped on the young. While America spends about as much, or even more on the elderly than many other rich nations, it spends significantly less on kids. Among the almost 40 countries in the OECD, only Turkey spends less per child as a percentage of their GDP. It's a big reason why the United States has a much higher rate of child poverty than most other affluent countries — and even has a higher rate of child poverty than some not-so-affluent countries.

In a new paper, the economists Anna Aizer, Hilary W. Hoynes and Adriana Lleras-Muney explore the reasons why the United States is such an outlier when it comes to fighting child poverty. While they acknowledge the reasons are varied and complex, they focus their analysis on one factor: American policymakers, influenced by economists, have dwelled much more on the costs of social programs than their benefits.

For decades, many American economists were pretty much obsessed with trying to document the ways in which welfare programs discouraged work, or broke up families, or encouraged pregnancy, while ignoring all the benefits that society gets from having kids grow up in a more financially secure environment. Aizer, Hoynes and Lleras-Muney analyzed research papers in America's top academic journals since the 1960s and found that prior to 2010, fewer than 27% of all articles about welfare programs even bothered to try to document their benefits.

(snip)

One recent study in a top economic journal, by Harvard economists Nathaniel Hendren and Ben Sprung-Keyser, analyzed the bang-per-buck of government spending programs. They found that social spending on kids stands out as having far greater returns for society over the long run than spending on adults. The returns are so large that it's possible that government spending on kids could end up paying for itself over those kids' lifetimes, through economic gains for the kids, and through reduced public spending on them through other social programs when they get older.

[NoMoreRepugs]

1. Sometimes it's hard to be a proud American.

[cinematicdiversions]

2. Racism.

Children tend to be more diverse than old people.

[crazylikafox]

3. Kids don't vote

Simple