THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT TO END CHILD POVERTY BEGINS WITH YOU
Child poverty continues to be a moral and economic crisis in the U.S. that affects each and every one of us. Historically, children in the United States have experienced higher rates of poverty compared to their peers in other industrialized nations due to the lower level of investment in children in the United States.
In response to the economic fallout of COVID-19, significant investments were made for children in the American Rescue Plan, which nearly cut child poverty in half in 2021. Improvements to the Child Tax Credit (CTC) were responsible for much of this impact - reaching families with the greatest level of hardship for the first time in the CTC’s history with increased amounts of cash assistance on a monthly basis.
Yet these improvements to the Child Tax Credit expired in 2021 and we saw that child poverty more than doubled in the United States in 2022 as a result. This is unacceptable — past progress shows us that we know how to combat child poverty when there is the political will to address it.
End Child Poverty U.S. is a national campaign led by the U.S. Child Poverty Action Group, a partnership of leading anti-poverty organizations. Our goal is to get a national child poverty reduction target codified into law, creating a mechanism to hold our lawmakers accountable to make long-term, lasting change. We need to regain the progress we made in 2021 and build upon it to ensure that no child in the United States lives in poverty.
We launched this campaign in early 2019, timed with the release of a landmark study on child poverty from the National Academy of Sciences. Written by a committee of the country’s leading experts, A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty puts forward an evidence-based policy agenda to cut our national child poverty rate in half within a decade. This study directly influenced the improvements to the Child Tax Credit made for children in the American Rescue Plan.
Past events have shown us that even in the midst of a global pandemic, we can reduce child poverty in the United States when we have the political will to act. It is only through collective action that we can defend and build upon this progress. End Child Poverty U.S. is designed as a platform to elevate the voices of those working around the country to address child poverty. Please see our Take Action page for ways you can get involved.