Poverty

Poverty policy encompasses the patchwork of federal and state programs designed to provide a safety net for low-income Americans: Medicaid, SNAP (food stamps), housing assistance, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the Child Tax Credit, and others. The official U.S. poverty rate was approximately 11.1 percent in 2023, representing about 37 million people living below the poverty line. Child poverty is an especially acute concern: the expanded Child Tax Credit in 2021 (part of the American Rescue Plan) cut child poverty nearly in half, from 15 percent to 8 percent — but that expansion expired in December 2021, and child poverty subsequently rose back toward pre-expansion levels. The U.S. has a higher poverty rate than most comparable wealthy nations and significantly lower economic mobility — meaning a child born poor in the U.S. has a smaller chance of rising to the middle class than in Canada, Germany, or Denmark. The causes are debated: inadequate wages and education, structural racism, geographic inequality, high housing costs, lack of affordable childcare, and healthcare costs all contribute. The 1996 welfare reform under President Clinton replaced the open-ended AFDC program with TANF, which imposed work requirements and time limits and has been both praised for reducing welfare rolls and criticized for failing to reach the poorest families. Debates continue about the tradeoffs between means-tested targeted programs and universal income supports like a guaranteed basic income.