How can we keep poor children from becoming poor adults? 

The nation’s income and poverty report for 2022, released by the Census Bureau last week, contained a number of disturbing findings. 

Average earnings and household incomes failed to keep pace with inflation. The most accurately measured poverty rate rose by nearly 5 percentage points. And, worst of all, the child poverty rate more than doubled — from 5.2 to 12.4 percent.  

While poverty among adults is troubling enough, poverty among children is worse — since these children are more likely to have low incomes as adults than their middle- or upper-income peers. This fact violates one of our most revered American principles: that all children deserve equal opportunity to pursue and achieve their hopes and dreams. It also constitutes bad economics — since we fail to help these children achieve their productive potentials, thus depriving the future national economy of badly needed productivity and tax revenue.  

And some racial and ethnic groups are much more scarred by childhood poverty than others. While the children of the Asian poor (who are often immigrants) are somewhat more successful escaping poverty themselves, and while Hispanic poor children do as well as their White counterparts, Black and American Indian poor children are most likely to remain trapped in low-income families as adults.   

Why do poor children have worse outcomes in the future? There is no single reason. Many live in families with too few resources to invest in making them healthy and well-educated. They attend highly segregated (by race and class) and under-resourced schools. They are often traumatized by exposure to violent crime in their neighborhoods and face high rates of harmful detention for their own brushes with the law.    

But here is some good news. The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine just released a report on how to reduce intergenerational poverty. I served on the committee that wrote the report, with many of the nation’s top social scientists, and we spent more than a year poring over the most rigorous research evidence on policies and programs of what works to reduce such poverty, and drew from that research numerous policy conclusions.  

What can we do to reduce intergenerational poverty? Perhaps our first goal could be to help poor parents improve their earnings and incomes. The best way to do so would be to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for low-income workers — making it more generous, phasing it in more quickly and phasing it out more slowly as household income rises. The EITC raises both income and employment among the poor, and clearly helps poor children gain more education as they grow up. This is a clear win-win for reducing child poverty.  

What about the Child Tax Credit (CTC), which appeared to be very successful at reducing child poverty when it was temporarily expanded in 2021? The committee did not have sufficient evidence on its long-term impacts to make a recommendation. Still, some combination of expanding both the EITC for working parents and the CTC regardless of parental work likely creates our best chance of raising incomes of poor parents and helping poor children in the process. 

How can we improve the earnings of poor children when they become adults? The best way is to raise their educational attainment and skills. The evidence suggests we should invest more resources in K-12 schools in poor communities, encourage more racial diversity among teachers, and reduce excessive discipline against children of color. For those who can attend college, we need to improve financial aid programs and also provide important supports (like child care and transportation, case management for emergency situations, tutoring and coaching as well as guidance) that improve their chances of completing degrees.  

And, for those who will not enroll in college, we need to expand access and scale up effective sectoral training programs, while also expanding high-quality career and technical education in high schools and community colleges.

Improving child health among the poor constitutes another important investment in their productivity as adults. Poor children need year-round access to Medicaid services and to nutritious meals. Ensuring clean air in schools and neighborhoods is extremely important. And, as teens they need good access to family planning services.  

And children in poor neighborhoods need less exposure to both crime and excessive incarceration, which are extremely harmful to young people. Reducing crime can be accomplished by investing in proven programs for at-risk young males (like Becoming a Man), by investing more in community institutions, and simply by putting more police on the streets (while maintaining good relations with local communities). Youth incarceration can be reduced by stressing other forms of monitoring. And passing gun safety legislation would clearly reduce the homicide rates in poor neighborhoods that so clearly traumatize children there. 

High rates of child poverty are unnecessary, unfair and unproductive. Rigorous research indicates a variety of ways in which the U.S. can reduce child poverty and its lasting effects. Making these investments is both a moral imperative and a sensible investment in our future. We should do it now.  

Harry J. Holzer is the LaFarge SJ Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University and a fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings.