Why U.S. Child Poverty Has Fallen to a Historic Low

A recent report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington, D.C., think tank, heralded some remarkably good news. Researchers Isaac Shapiro and Danilo Trisi found that the U.S. child poverty rate hit a record low in 2016, at 15.6 percent—nearly half what it was 50 years ago. “The figures were actually a little surprising to us, and might be surprising to those who are following the poverty debate,” Shapiro told The Atlantic.

That’s in part because data on poverty often comes from the U.S. Census, which provides an overall poverty rate and does not take into account non-cash, government resources, such as food stamps and tax benefits like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC). This data shows that the most recent child poverty rate is only modestly lower than it was in the 1960s. Shapiro and Trisi’s study included the government benefits, and the results paint a different, more hopeful picture.