A recent report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation indicates that child poverty in the U.S. has nearly tripled since 2021. In Arkansas, the Supplemental Poverty Measure is at 14 % higher than the national average.
Pete Gess is the economic policy director at Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, and he says that indicator, Supplemental Poverty Measure, was launched in 2011 by the U.S. Census Bureau to better reflect the data that articulates poverty.
Pete Gess: One is it includes other real world costs that families face, such as healthcare, childcare expenses, housing expenses. But it also includes a more realistic food budget. And it also has regional differences. So, as you might expect, even in Arkansas, food probably costs different in Northwest Arkansas than it does in the Delta, for example. And certainly there's lots of variation across the country. And finally, and probably most important for this conversation is that the Supplemental Poverty Measure also includes those public assistance programs that are provided to Americans. So things like, you know, Section 8 housing vouchers or SNAP benefits, the supplementary nutrition program. Right. All of these things obviously affect the family budget as well. And so what this measure is doing is looking at using primarily the Supplemental Poverty Measure, how many children around the country and narrowing into Arkansas are in poverty.
Matthew Moore: And so what we're seeing from this number, when we look at 2021 compared to 2024, when this data was last measured, child poverty has nearly tripled in the United States. What does that tell us?
Pete Gess: Yeah, a couple things, obviously. Families are really struggling on the most important level, and we should really care about children and poverty especially. And you know, why is that? I think I'll state the obvious here. Poverty is extremely dangerous for children. Right. And so, you know, the first few years, zero to five and beyond are super important in the development of a child. And poverty undermines that development and their long term well-being. And so what this report says, yes, it has really gone up. And the primary driver to this is we knew how to really reduce the amount of childhood poverty in this country. So after the pandemic, we expanded the child tax credit, the federal child tax credit, along with some other assistance programs. And that really brought childhood poverty down to its lowest level of about 5% nationwide. And when those expired, we saw this great ballooning of childhood poverty. And, you know, a similar thing in Arkansas and that first time period 2021, we're talking about just under 9 % in poverty, and now we're up to 14.5%, which ranks us at about 40th in the country, and above the national average of 13%. So, obviously it's alarming. There should be, you know, strong moral arguments about why we need to especially look out for children. But there's also really sound economic arguments. In the United States, childhood poverty costs us $1 trillion annually. And that cost is from lost income, lost productivity, additional healthcare, and public assistance programs on the back end that need to support people when we know if we if we invested now in children and work to and ultimate goal of eliminating childhood poverty, then that's such a sound investment. The return on investment is really, really strong and we can minimize long-term costs.
Matthew Moore: During the pandemic, we saw an expansion of the child tax credit. We saw some other sorts of public assistance programs that made larger expansions. Do you think that that would play a role in lowering that 14% number here that we have in Arkansas to an even lower number?
Pete Gess: Yes, absolutely. And it's not just, you know, my thoughts on this. There's super strong evidence that this actually helps. I already mentioned that because we expanded it, we greatly reduced childhood poverty, and quite frankly, poverty for all Arkansans. Right. But, you know, we're able to look at the data and actually control for the public assistance programs that are now in place. Right. And so if we took all those away from Arkansans, right, we would see that 14.5% of children poverty skyrocketed to almost 30%. So more than double without those public assistance programs. So without a doubt, there's just tremendous evidence that these programs really do work. And I will add that, I mean, there's probably a limit to that, right? You know, the goal for all of us should be to support families and children when they really need it and help them thrive by getting on a pathway to prosperity, to success. And that really takes government, of course, but it really takes all of us working together. Government, you know, businesses, nonprofit organizations in Arkansas thinking about how do we create economic opportunity in the communities where people live? Yes, we could use more jobs, but also the right kind of jobs in this rapidly changing economy with AI and everything else is how do we create those right kind of jobs that lift families and children out of poverty?
Matthew Moore: As someone who spends a lot of your time thinking about policy, obviously you're having communication with local policymakers, local leaders in that way. But are you also having conversations with local nonprofits and thinking about how do we find ways to not just make this a burden of the government, but how do we find ways where we have philanthropic interests who can help to provide some supplemental help in these ways as well?
Pete Gess: Yeah, absolutely. We are part of a consortium of nonprofits here. It's called Arkansas Strong Families consortium. And we do work together to think, you know, holistically about what kind of policies, what kind of strategies might take place. So, for example, as we all know really well, Nov. 1, you know, this period of the shutdown is going to be really hard on Arkansas families who are SNAP recipients, right? 240,000 Arkansans, because of the government shutdown and the Trump administration's refusal to find other funds to support SNAP, we're going to have a lot of families that lose that benefit. And so food banks are working really hard. One of our partners, the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance, is working really hard to figure out how they can support Arkansans. Really, really difficult time. But here's a quick stat for you. For every meal that the food banks provide in Arkansas and around the country, SNAP provides nine. Right. And so government does have a very important role here. It's great to see the philanthropic community, the faith-based community, the nonprofit community really stepping up at this time. But there are limits to that. So the real question is, going forward, how do we make these partnerships with the nonprofit world and government? And, again, for-profit corporations and businesses who understand a lot of this is workforce development issues, right? And so a lot of the programs that support working families are really important to success for for businesses in the state.
Matthew Moore: For better or for worse, the government has a much wider breadth and ability to reach than, you know, nonprofits do.
Pete Gess: That's absolutely right. We can all philosophically disagree about the proper role of government, but we can all agree that government is really important and plays a lot of really important functions. And if you look at, you know, the return on sort of tax dollars, government does a lot and we expect them to do a lot, you know, on the local level, it's, you know, no potholes in the road and picking up the trash, right? But there are important statewide policies we could do to, a lot of states around the country have decided that, hey, you know, the federal child tax credit and the federal earned income tax credit are so important that we can actually supplement that here at the state level and have our own state level earned income tax credit or child tax credit. And, you know, it's really interesting. So this report we're talking about today is from the Annie Casey Foundation. They also release annually a Kids Count data book, which, you know, I'm sure you've talked about before and covered, it, you know, it ranks all the states around the country on several dimensions. Arkansas is consistently near the bottom. It was ranked 45th this year. Arkansas does not have a child tax credit, a state level child tax credit, or a earned income tax credit. But on average, states that do are 16 points higher in that overall ranking when it comes to child well-being. So again, just more evidence that that makes a difference. And so a child tax credit would lift more children out of poverty here. And what I really like about a child tax credit and why I think the state might want to consider pursuing it, is it gives families freedom of choice in how they invest that money. Right. Families know how best to use that money. It might be for food purchases. It might be for, you know, basic needs to take care of a baby. Like diapers. Right? But it could also be transportation. It could be all the things that parents need to really support their kids and their families. And so, you know, that's something that that state policymakers could consider as a really valuable tool for helping more families thrive in Arkansas.
Matthew Moore: Finally, here I want to touch on, we talked about how the Trump administration is not releasing funds to continue funding SNAP beginning on Nov. 1. Arkansas U.S. Senator John Boozman said on Tuesday that the Department of Agriculture is right not to use contingency funding to support SNAP benefits. What are your thoughts on the senator's statement that he agrees with this decision, that we should not release contingency funds to fund SNAP benefits beginning on Nov. 1?
Pete Gess: Well, let me just say that Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, you know, with the interest of family health and well-being, is urging lawmakers to reconsider. We are advocating for release of those funds. You know, the administration was creative in figuring out how to pay service people, people in the military. And that's really important. And I know, really valued by lots of Arkansans, but so is not putting more families in poverty and hunger. So figuring out a creative way to use those funds to shore up the SNAP program while the shutdown continues and hopefully we'll come to an end soon. But SNAP is one of those priorities a lot. One out of eight Americans supplements their food budget with SNAP. It's super important to them. And I will add, you know, again, we can think about the individual and not want, you know, children and their parents to go hungry. And by the way, over two thirds of SNAP recipients are children or adults with disabilities, right? So that's who we're really talking about here. And of those children, again, the majority, the vast majority have parents who are working. Right. But my point on this is SNAP does help individuals, but it really helps communities as well. You know, for every dollar spent in a community, there's a multiplier effect. So it has a bigger economic impact. And unfortunately, we already have some rural areas that are a bit of food deserts in Arkansas. And this is just going to make the problem worse. And I really hope that some of these small rural groceries do not go out of business from the lack of, you know, SNAP funding that is helping families but also helping the community.
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