We tend to think about children in the future workforce in terms of education,
and goodness knows we have a lot we can do in this country about this.
But you point out that from the pandemic, we saw something about not
just the education but the care for our children.
That's exactly right. So everybody is behind the need for a
skilled workforce and boosting educational attainment.
And everyone's behind improving schools. But the truth of the matter is that kids
home life really dictates their ability to thrive and learn in schools.
And we don't do nearly enough in this country to make sure that the material
needs of our nation's children are being taken care of.
We have millions of children show up at school every day with the burdens of
poverty or economic insecurity. They're too tired or hungry or stressed
to learn to the fullest of their ability.
What was amazing during the pandemic is that, somewhat surprisingly, we actually
managed to reduce child poverty in this country by a half or a third.
I mean, this was really a historic accomplishment.
And so how did we do that? Well, Congress extended the child tax
credit, made it more generous, increase the full credit amount from two thousand
to three thousand dollars. Thirty six hundred dollars for a child
under the age of six. And it made the credit fully refundable,
which meant that even parents who didn't work, who had no earnings, could get the
full credit amount. And the upshot of that was a historic
reduction in child poverty. And I think that means looking for a
bipartisan way forward to an enhanced child tax credit.
So coming back to the investment question, I mean, we're not continuing
that program the way it was, at least as not as of right now.
Objections have been costs too much money and actually discourages work.
That's right. So Congress, despite, you know,
everybody, the celebrated reduction in child poverty.
Congress did not make the expansion of the child tax credit permanent.
And a few. There were few key hangups, political
hangups, reasonable hangups. So one was the worry that if we
permanently sent checks to out of work parents of three thousand or thirty six
hundred dollars, that would actually induce too many parents to leave the
workforce. That was a really big hang up with
congressional Republicans, as you mentioned.
Another worry was that it was too expensive.
It added, you know, over one hundred billion dollars to the cost of the
existing child tax credit. We propose that parents who were out of
work only get half of the full amount and then the full credit amount of three
thousand or thirty six hundred, that could phase in steeply.
And so what does this do? This rewards work.
This incentivizes parents to go to work and it still gets a lot of money,
material resources to these very low income families.
The phase in, as I say, that means if I make more money as somebody who has half
of this talent, I could get some more of my full credit incrementally.
Exactly. As you go to work for every hundred
dollars you earn, you get 30 dollars until you hit the full credit amount.
Right. So we're increasing the return to an
hour of work on the issue of the child tax credit during the 20 21 expansion
being too expensive. Well, a lot of the additional income was
actually not going towards fighting child poverty or bolstering the income
of low income families. A lot of that was the full credit.
Three thousand dollars thirty six hundred dollars was going very high
income families. So there is a way to keep the costs
down. Target the resources on children and
families for whom this money will make a real difference.
It would really increase their ability to pay the rent, to buy nutritious food,
to pay for high quality child care. Target the resources where we know there
is a real large social return and do it in a way that doesn't discourage
parental work. Again, there is an easy path forward
here. It's obvious it's just playing with the
policy parameters and we can't afford not to do this as a country.
There clearly MLS is a major moral issue that you raise here that all of us feel
deeply about. But talk about the economic issue and
the investment. It will still your plan who are adopted
would cost a fair amount of money. What's the investment return on that in
terms of a higher quality workforce in the out years?
David, we have so much evidence now that alleviating the material need of
children from low income families has a positive social return.
When we enhance the income going to low income families, we see those children
have better health outcomes. They have better educational outcomes
when they're adults, they have higher completed levels of education and higher
earnings. Bolstering the income of low income kids
is a positive social investment. We have lots of evidence on that.
Sending the full credit amount to higher income families even, you know, above
one hundred thousand dollars. That has a political appeal.
But but put policy wise, there's a low social return on that money.
Getting that money to families, making 10, 20, 30 thousand dollars a year, you
are quite literally making an investment in children.
That's how we build up a skilled workforce from the ground up.
Investing in those children, making sure that they can get to school.
Ready to learn. Making sure that they have safe housing,
adequate nutrition. That's how we should think about sending
income assistance, full credit amount to low income families with children and
families to talk about the alternative investment, for example, in child care.
Just this week, we saw the power of Congress come out with some rules out on
the Chips and Science Act. You have to have child care facilities.
We know that's going for children. We don't necessarily know what the child
tax credits going for do. Yeah.
So this is a really important point. So people who advocate for investing in
children, there's a lot of different ways we could do it.
In my to my mind, the evidence is quite clear that giving income to low income
families is really the best way to boost their children's health educational
outcomes. They're learning the truth of the matter
is, not all families need child care. You know, families who can't pay the
rent, who can't who can't put food on their table, a child care subsidy, a
child care spot at some local organization doesn't really help them.
And we do have evidence that, again, when we send income to low income
families from a variety of contexts, you see that in general kids do better.
That means that their parents are in general allocating the money in ways
that benefit the kids development. Now, the other issue about child care is
it's actually quite complicated. The child care market has a lot of
challenges. And again, the surprising, amazing thing
is during the pandemic, when the economy was weak, we managed to reduce child
poverty in this country by a huge amount.
And how we did that was we sent money to low income families with children.
And so that's why I think that's a better, more effective way of addressing
the material needs. The immediate material needs of families
with children then throwing that money instead into into child care subsidies.