‘Just Give Money to the Parents’: A Critical and Comparative Policy Analysis of Childhood Poverty in the United States and the Child Tax Credit
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TREVOR M. O'CONNOR | Perspectives Submission
The Graduate Inequality Review, Volume I (June 2022) https://doi.org/10.56298/kyvpw86gjy |
Abstract: In January 2022 alone, over 3.7 million American children were pushed into the throes ofpoverty. This striking number marks a 41% increase from December 2021 when the expanded monthly US Child Tax Credit (CTC) expired, leaving many families without the economic life raft to keep them afloat. Such an increase in child poverty has concrete and damaging social, political, economic, and ethical ramifications. Over the past decades, a plethora of studies have established a clear, causal link between the stress, shame, and material deprivation of poverty and the negative consequences on early childhood development and life chances. Economically, childhood poverty costs the US $1.3 trillion annually in lost productivity and social ills, about 5.4% of GDP. This paper seeks to critically examine the causes, consequences, and burgeoning solutions to childhood poverty in the United States through a policy review and accompanying policy memo. The policy review is divided into four constituent parts: 1) an overview of American childhood poverty, 2) a critical analysis of the US’ current approaches, 3) an outline of alternative policy approaches, and 4) an outline of possible policy options for the US. This policy review, utilising the latest empirical evidence and embedded within poverty literature, is followed by a policy memo written to the Chair of the US Senate Budget Committee, urging for the introduction of a permanent monthly, expanded, non-citizenship based, inflation-indexed, and ‘refundable’ Child Tax Credit that will serve as a minimum guaranteed income for America’s families. |
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