By Cara Baldari, First Focus Campaign for Children

All children deserve to live happy, fulfilling lives. This means that no child should be denied the chance for a bright future based on their family’s hardship.  

Yet due to a lack of political will, the United States allows millions of children to experience poverty and homelessness each year. Our lawmakers also do not do enough to ensure that all children have the resources — such as nutritious food, stable housing, clean diapers, and other necessities — that they need to thrive. This inaction has repercussions not only for the children it affects, but for our nation as a whole. 

New data released today from the U.S. Census Bureau finds that 13.7 percent of children (nearly 10 million) experienced poverty in the United States in 2023, a 10% increase from last year and a 163% increase from 2021. This represents nearly a million more children in poverty than last year. Tens of millions more children live in families whose incomes exceed the poverty line but who still experience significant material hardship. The U.S. child poverty rate is significantly higher than in other wealthy countries, largely because our nation fails to sustainably invest in our children.

Maintaining this high level of child poverty is a conscious policy choice. In 2021 the United States cut child poverty nearly in half largely by improving the Child Tax Credit with increased payments that were distributed monthly and that reached the children most in need. The expiration of these improvements — and in particular their reach to the poorest children — increased suffering for more than a quarter of our nation’s children, who are once again deprived of the full Child Tax Credit because their family earns too little. These children are disproportionately infants and toddlers, children of color, children in rural areas, and children who live in larger families.  

Families from all over the country have said that the loss of these payments has meant less money for food, diapers, clothes, school supplies, and all the things that kids need to thrive. Despite the ongoing efforts of some champion lawmakers, we have yet to see these improvements reinstated after they expired in 2022. 

Voters must elect lawmakers who will keep fighting for kids. It is encouraging that Vice President Harris and Governor Walz, who both have a long track record of prioritizing kids, immediately made reducing child poverty a focus of their presidential ticket by calling for a significant expansion of the Child Tax Credit for babies. Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Bob Casey (D-PA), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) are also leaders on behalf of kids and are all facing tough reelections this year.    

Every year, First Focus Campaign for Children recognizes 120 members of Congress who make children a priority. Several lawmakers from both sides of the aisle make this list year after year. First Focus Campaign for Children works with these and other lawmakers to advance a child-centered agenda designed to improve the lives of children in the United States and abroad. These lawmakers also are instrumental to stopping policies that would harm children, such as those proposed by Project 2025, the playbook for a Republican administration. To read more about how Project 2025 would harm America’s children — and particularly children who are most in need — please see our Analysis: Project 2025.  

For additional information on child poverty in the U.S. please see our updated annual fact sheet, an analysis of child poverty as an issue in the 2024 presidential election by First Focus on Children President Bruce Lesley, or visit our Child Investment Research Hub.