How anti-poverty programs have helped American children

(Huntington, West Virginia) When Cecelia Jackson was born nearly 30 years ago, about a quarter of American children were poor, a figure that included her for most of her childhood.

Her father, a truck driver with only an elementary education, injured his arm when Cecelia Jackson was young, then raised five children on a disability check. There was no food, no worries, and she remembers only going on vacation once, an eight-hour drive to the beach.

“Our life was a struggle,” she says.

Cecelia Jackson’s children struggle less. Like her father, Cecelia Jackson earns a modest salary – working as a counselor in a government early childhood program Head Start – but she enjoys a safety net that does a lot for low-income parents, especially those who, like her, work. The proportion of children the government considers poor has more than halved, and the children of M^me Jackson-Conner, Ezekiel and Lyric are not among them.

While she and her husband, Jarren, a student and musician, earn less than $21,000 after taxes and business expenses, they receive about as much in government aid, doubling their net income. This level of assistance, intended in part to offset the prevalence of low wages, has become common among low-income working families. And it takes the Jacksons from several thousand dollars below the poverty line to several thousand above.

“It definitely makes a difference,” said Cecelia Jackson. “The children have plenty to eat. If they are sick, we can take them to the doctor. I have dreams and goals that I won’t need it one day, but for now, I’m grateful the help is there. »

Child poverty has fallen over the past generation, and few places have seen bigger declines than West Virginia, a state that once epitomized child deprivation. Child poverty in that state fell nearly 75% between 1993 and 2019, according to a comprehensive analysis by Child Trends, a nonpartisan research group, conducted in partnership with the New York Times. This figure is to be compared with a drop of 59% nationally.

A visit to Huntington, a river town in Appalachia where tales of difficult childhood abound, shows how an expanded safety net provides children with protection their parents often lacked and profoundly impacts the economic and emotional lives of families.

This safety net is less the product of a unified vision than of a series of ad hoc programs that reflect both liberal and conservative ideas. Over the past quarter century, strict welfare laws have reduced cash assistance to non-working families, but tax credits for low-wage workers have been extended and total spending increased.

During a series of conversations, the Jacksons spoke in unusually detailed fashion about the impact of aid on their budget. So are other families at Head Start, where Cecelia Jackson works. Together, their stories provide a good, if unscientific, sample of life on the front lines of child poverty reduction.

Nutrition programs subsidize the lactose-free milk Lyric, 2, needs. Medicaid funded an operation that helped 5-year-old Ezekiel overcome a speech delay. Tax credits enabled the Jacksons to buy a new car, which they drove on family vacations, unlike Cecelia Jackson had ever known as a child.

The Jacksons react to financial pressures in mixed ways. Jarren Jackson, 28, is an affable jazz musician, seemingly immune to stress. Cecelia Jackson, 27, worries and apologizes throughout the day. Both are proud of their dedication as parents – “we’re an incredibly tight-knit family,” says Jarren Jackson – and say the help increases their children’s chances of long-term success.

“We did it with and without,” said Jarren Jackson. “The difference is huge. »

Cornbread, beans and potatoes

When Cecelia Jackson describes the challenges of growing up in poverty, she begins with location. “I grew up in a cemetery,” she says. His father owned a trailer in rural Ohio with a cemetery on three sides. “I was playing next to the graves. »

Money was lacking even when his father was working, but his injury increased the difficulties and left him angry and depressed. Her mother ran out of food stamps with an inexpensive meal that remains in M’s repertoire.^me Jackson: cornbread, beans and potatoes.

When she got to high school, her family moved across the Ohio River to Huntington, and Cecilia Jackson had to raise her sister’s child. She was already feeling hopelessly behind for school when she found out she was pregnant. She gave birth in her last year of high school and dropped out of school, with more worries than plans and little help from the baby’s father.

As a poor single mother in 2012, M^me Jackson turned to a welfare system that had undergone profound changes in her short life. Parents who worked received more help, but those who did not work received less, with time limits and work requirements for cash assistance.

To explain the decline in child poverty, the Liberals are emphasizing the expansion of benefits at a time of stagnating wages. Conservatives say tough welfare laws have pushed more people into work. M^me Jackson says both of these developments affected her.

“It kicked my butt, in a good way,” she says of the time limit on welfare. Within a year, she got her equivalency degree and a full-time job as an elder care aide, which she loves.

That’s when she met Jarren Jackson, a student at Marshall University who played seven instruments, talked about his jazz hero, Cannonball Adderley, and was kind to his son. “He was like a whole new world, which I didn’t think I was well enough to know about,” she says. The interracial relationship is met with disapproval from both families – she’s white, he’s black – but the resistance fades over time.

After the birth of Ezekiel, their first child together, they went through a period they call “the difficult period”. Cecelia Jackson was crippled by postpartum depression and lost her job as a caregiver. Jarren Jackson left school to work in a call center, but he earned too little to pay the rent. They moved to avoid eviction.

The depression lasted for over a year, but with the help of medication, Cecelia Jackson recovered. She found a job at a Head Start center that “makes her heart happy.” But after almost five years, she only earns $11.28 an hour for the 10-month school year, with summers unpaid. Working for a government program, she needs the help of the government. Without this help, she would be raising her children on about $11,000 below the poverty line (about $31,200 in Huntington for a family of five).

“We work very hard, but we appreciate the help,” she says.

A better chance to fight

The Head Start center is filled with similar families, with precarious conditions at the bottom of the service economy and escaping poverty with the help of the government. With tight budgets, limited prospects, and a poverty line set so low that many non-poor families still struggle, the success they embody may seem modest. But compared to poverty, it is still progress.

It doesn’t take much to convince 32-year-old caregiver Josie Smith that child poverty has been reduced since she was young. She grew up in a trailer so dilapidated that she was repeatedly inspected by child protective services. “We were much, much poorer than now,” she says. “That’s why I worked so hard”, to offer more to his children.

Yet after nearly six years at an agency that cares for patients with mental health issues, Ms.^me Smith earns less than $12 an hour, while nearly $16,000 in tax credits and food assistance lift her children, August, 8, and Belle, 5, out of poverty. Government assistance accounts for approximately 47% of his net income.

Until two years ago, Patricia Shepperson and her husband, Al, had two incomes to raise their daughter, Rosalee. But health issues cost Al Shepperson his job, and their income was cut in half. His weight has soared to 40 pounds, and he struggles with arthritis, diabetes, depression and self-criticism.

“I should work,” he said. “My family deserves better. »

Although Patricia Shepperson works full time at a job she has held for 13 years, her hourly wage of around $12.40 would leave the family impoverished without significant help.

Al Shepperson said the parallel decline in his health and income had been “absolute hell” for everyone, including Rosalee, but he acknowledged the government help kept him housed and fed. “It gives him a better fighting chance,” he said.

This article was originally published in the New York Times.