Children in Poverty in United States

United States

Families with incomes below the federal poverty level may struggle to meet their children’s basic needs. Living in poverty can have negative effects on the physical health, development and educational achievement of children. Children who come from low-income families or neighborhoods are more likely to have health problems such as low birth weight and asthma. Children living in poverty are also more likely to experience adverse childhood experiences and less likely to be ready for school. 

Living in poverty affects a child’s ability to succeed academically and may impact potential future earnings. Childhood poverty costs the United States an estimated $1.03 trillion annually, factoring in lost potential earnings and associated medical costs.

According to America’s Health Rankings analysis, the prevalence of poverty is higher among Black and American Indian/Alaska Native children compared with Asian and white children. Additional research shows that poverty is also higher among:

• Children of single mothers compared with children living in two-parent or single-father households. 
• Children ages 0-5 compared with children ages 12-17.

Many government programs and community interventions exist to help reduce the number of children in poverty and support low-income families:

• The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the largest U.S. poverty-alleviation program, provides a tax credit to employed families and individuals living in poverty. Research shows the program’s benefits include reducing the prevalence of low birth weight and preterm births and increasing breastfeeding rates. 
• The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), previously known as food stamps, provides nutrition benefits to families in need.
• The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) provides food and nutritional support specifically for pregnant and postpartum women and children. WIC has been associated with a lower prevalence of low birth weight, with greater gains among women with low education.
• The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) provides free or low-cost meals to students at school.
• Child First is a comprehensive program that provides financial, housing and food assistance to low-income families, as well as services to help families learn social-emotional and healthy relationship skills and build more supportive environments for children to grow and learn.
• Medicaid provides health care to low-income adults, pregnant women and children.
• Universal basic income programs can provide those living in poverty with regular cash transfers to meet basic needs regardless of employment status, age or other restrictive conditions. 

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has created a set of policy package proposals that could reduce child poverty in the U.S. by an estimated 50% by building on existing programs like EITC and SNAP to maximize effectiveness while expanding proven services.

Recent innovations to mitigate the adverse effects of childhood poverty use the two-generation approach, which promotes family resilience by combining support and education programs for parents with early childhood intervention programs to create a stronger, total family experience.

While not specific to children, reducing the proportion of people living in poverty is a Healthy People 2030 economic stability objective.

Child Welfare Information Gateway. “Two-Generation Approaches to Supporting Family Well-Being.” Issue Brief. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Children’s Bureau, 2023. https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/bulletins-2gen.pdf.

Council on Community Pediatrics. “Poverty and Child Health in the United States.” Pediatrics 137, no. 4 (April 1, 2016): e20160339–e20160339. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2016-0339.

Duncan, Greg, and Suzanne Le Menestrel, eds. A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.17226/25246.

Haider, Areeba. “The Basic Facts About Children in Poverty.” Center for American Progress, January 12, 2021. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/basic-facts-children-poverty/.

Hamad, Rita, and David H. Rehkopf. “Poverty, Pregnancy, and Birth Outcomes: A Study of the Earned Income Tax Credit.” Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology 29, no. 5 (September 2015): 444–52. https://doi.org/10.1111/ppe.12211.

Hoynes, Hilary, Marianne Page, and Ann Huff Stevens. “Can Targeted Transfers Improve Birth Outcomes?: Evidence from the Introduction of the WIC Program.” Journal of Public Economics 95, no. 7 (August 1, 2011): 813–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2010.12.006.

Hoynes, Hilary W., and Ankur J. Patel. “Effective Policy for Reducing Inequality? The Earned Income Tax Credit and the Distribution of Income.” Working Paper 21340. National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2015. https://doi.org/10.3386/w21340.

McLaughlin, Michael, and Mark R. Rank. “Estimating the Economic Cost of Childhood Poverty in the United States.” Social Work Research 42, no. 2 (June 1, 2018): 73–83. https://doi.org/10.1093/swr/svy007.

Sandel, Megan, Elena Faugno, Angela Mingo, Jessie Cannon, Kymberly Byrd, Dolores Acevedo Garcia, Sheena Collier, Elizabeth McClure, and Renée Boynton Jarrett. “Neighborhood-Level Interventions to Improve Childhood Opportunity and Lift Children Out of Poverty.” Academic Pediatrics 16, no. 3 (April 2016): S128–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acap.2016.01.013.

Wilson-Simmons, Renée, Yang Jiang, and Yumiko Aratani. “Strong at the Broken Places: The Resiliency of Low-Income Parents.” New York: National Center for Children in Poverty, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, April 2017. https://www.nccp.org/publication/strong-at-the-broken-places/.