Addressing Child Poverty: How Does the United States Compare With Other Nations?
Open accessAbstract
Poverty during childhood raises a number of policy challenges. The earliest years are critical in terms of future cognitive and emotional development and early health outcomes, and have long-lasting consequences on future health. In this article child poverty in the United States is compared with a set of other developed countries. To the surprise of few, results show that child poverty is high in the United States. But why is poverty so much higher in the United States than in other rich nations? Among child poverty drivers, household composition and parent's labor market participation matter a great deal. But these are not insurmountable problems. Many of these disadvantages can be overcome by appropriate public policies. For example, single mothers have a very high probability of poverty in the United States, but this is not the case in other countries where the provision of work support increases mothers' labor earnings and together with strong public cash support effectively reduces child poverty. In this article we focus on the role and design of public expenditure to understand the functioning of the different national systems and highlight ways for improvements to reduce child poverty in the United States. We compare relative child poverty in the United States with poverty in a set of selected countries. The takeaway is that the United States underinvests in its children and their families and in so doing this leads to high child poverty and poor health and educational outcomes. If a nation like the United States wants to decrease poverty and improve health and life chances for poor children, it must support parental employment and incomes, and invest in children's futures as do other similar nations with less child poverty.
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Rates of childhood poverty and inequality are substantially higher in the U.S. relative to other wealthy countries.
“Owing partly to weaker welfare and anti-poverty policies in the U.S., rates of childhood poverty and inequality are substantially higher in the U.S. relative to other wealthy countries [39,40,41].”
From Poverty, Material Hardship, and Children’s Outcomes: A Nuanced Understanding of Material Hardship in Childhood (2022) · cites this paper as [41]
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- Authors
- Smeeding, T., & Thévenot, C.
- Affiliations
- University of Wisconsin–Madison (US)
- Organisation de Coopération et de Développement Economiques (FR)
- Corresponding author
- Smeeding, Timothy
- ORCID
- Smeeding, Timothy
- Venue
- Academic Pediatrics
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2016-04
- Volume
- 16
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- S67-S75
- ISSN
- 1876-2859 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC6087662
- OpenAlex
- W2330504469
- Cited by
- 51
- References
- 29
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 20.91
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Academic Pediatrics (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD047873)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Income, Poverty, and Inequality
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social Policies and Family
- Keywords
- child poverty, cross-national comparison, United States, single mothers, household composition, child health outcomes, educational outcomes, child welfare policy
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Australia, Canada, Child, Child, Preschool, Educational Status, Employment, Europe, Family Characteristics, Financing, Government, Health Status, Humans, Infant, Infant, Newborn, Parents, Poverty, Public Assistance, Public Policy, United States, Developed Countries, Single-Parent Family, Social Determinants of Health
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