The Price of Poverty: The falling child poverty rate

WAMU 88.5 | By Michelle Harven

Published October 18, 2022 at 8:34 AM EDT

A child joins his father as residents receive food at the St. Helena Pantry in the Bronx in New York City.

Child poverty has dramatically decreased in the U.S. over the past 25 years. The now-defunct Child Tax Credit helped bring those numbers down even further, cutting child them by roughly 30 percent.

However, when we compare the U.S. to other developed nations, child poverty rates in America remain higher than the rest. And even before the pandemic, more than four in ten children lived in households that struggled to provide the basics.

Why is America such an outlier? And what lessons are we learning from the drops in child poverty?

We continue our series on the Price of Poverty with a look at one of our most vulnerable groups – children.