We could abolish child poverty in the U.S. with Social Security benefits for poor kids

Brookings reflects on the fact that U.S. federal policies and programs do not prioritize children. If they did – if we did – we could do much more to fight childhood poverty. Brookings describes a simple thought and data exercise: What if we were as committed to alleviating childhood poverty in this country as we are to alleviating elderly poverty? What if we gave every child living in poverty the average Social Security benefit received by a Social Security recipient age 65 or over? The answer is that we would essentially eliminate child poverty in this country. If we gave each child living in poverty the average Social Security benefit received by a Social Security recipient age 65 and over – that’s $17,112 annually, according to Current Population Survey data – the rate of childhood poverty in this country would fall to less than 1 percent. The number of children living in poverty would fall from over 10 million to about 413,000. If we gave each child living in poverty half the average Social Security benefit – $8,556 annually – the rate of childhood poverty in this country would fall to 3.03 percent, to 2.2 million children.