Child Poverty and Inequality

A new book has arrived in my mailbox that deserves some attention. It's called Child Poverty and Inequality and is written by Duncan Lindsey. Duncan is a professor at the UCLA School of Public Affairs and for years has been one of the country's leading voices on child welfare . He is not only a notable historian of the evolution of family policy in the U.S., but has particularly focused on the plight faced by vulnerable children, such as those growing up in foster care and poor families. What also distinguishes Duncan's approach and what comes through in this book is his ongoing search for policy ideas that have the potential to transform what is for many children a pretty bleak landscape.

Before he gets there, he reviews the data on inequality in its various manifestations and recounts the experience since welfare reform was enacted in the mid-1990s. One of the highlights here is how declining case loads are somewhat offset by rises in food assistance. The bottom line result has been rising child poverty since the early years of the decade despite being a time of modest economic expansion.

When Lindsey begins his search for policy alternatives, he looks to what other countries have done and the limits of our current approach in the U.S. The international survey finds policies such as publicly financed child care, child allowances that provide direct financial support to families, more reliable child support collection systems, and increasing interest in children savings accounts. He in fact was an early proponent of the children saving account approach, highlighting it in his seminal 1994 book The Welfare of Children.

There's a lot here to chew on in this book for those truly interested in making a material impact in the welfare of children. I think we should do what the United Kingdom has done. Not only have they implemented an accounts-at-birth policy, called the Child Trust Fund, but they also have established a national, long-term goal of eliminating childhood poverty. We could do they same and start off by pledging to cut it in half over the next ten years. This will force policymakers to get serious about searching for solutions and perhaps more importantly monitoring progress. It would raise the profile of the issue and garner some much needed attention. Just like this book attempts to do.