Reducing child poverty in America

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISMOECD takes many forms. One, alas, is a shockingly high rate of child poverty. According to the ’s measure, which defines as poor those families living on less than half of median family income, 21% of American children are in poverty. This is double the rate in France and nearly triple that in Poland. This grim statistic is cause to welcome two proposals to reduce child poverty, one from Joe Biden’s administration, the other from Mitt Romney, a Republican senator.Helping poor Americans involves balancing a complicated set of trade-offs. The more people who receive help, the more money it costs. The solution to this is usually to means-test aid, which does the most good per dollar spent. Yet help that is narrowly targeted at a small group of Americans can easily be dismissed as aid to the undeserving, eroding the political support it requires to exist. Highly targeted schemes are also more complicated to administer. Much of the help to poor families comes in the form of tax credits, which are confusing and go unclaimed by many of those who are eligible to receive them.