Volunteers deliver water and other supplies to the homeless in Los Angeles. Poverty rates will fall in 2021 thanks in part to anti-pandemic policy measures, but poverty advocates fear they will rise again without them.
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Mario Tama / Getty Images
Volunteers deliver water and other supplies to the homeless in Los Angeles. Poverty rates will fall in 2021 thanks in part to anti-pandemic policy measures, but poverty advocates fear they will rise again without them.
Mario Tama / Getty Images
The Census Bureau announced some exciting news on Tuesday.
Child poverty rates are at historic lows, according to the Bureau annual report income, poverty and health insurance. And the percentage of Americans without health insurance is also down in 2021 from the year before.
But the good news can be short-lived. Both gains have been driven by pandemic-related interim policies, and without action by policymakers, they could quickly unravel.
Child tax credit key to poverty alleviation
Child poverty rate will decrease significantly in 2021, from 9.7% in 2020 to 5.2%. The overall poverty rate for all age groups is just under 8% – down from 9.2% in 2020.
These figures are based on Additional Poverty Measureswhich takes into account all sorts of expenses families have, as well as the scope of pandemic aid many families have received.
Poverty experts attribute much of this improvement to the child tax credit that Congress promoted in 2021 under the Rescue America Plan. Congress also expanded it to include millions of lower-income families.
The child tax credit gives families more money to spend on essentials, Sharon Parrottwho researched the issue for the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.
“They spend on housing, food, education, they can do some extracurricular activities that high-income families take for granted,” she said. “They’re investing in their children and their families being able to make a living in ways that really matter.”
And Parrott says all of this can have long-term benefits for children, such as doing better in school and being healthier.
Approach to record low uninsured rates, thanks to Medicaid
Census numbers show that 8.3% of Americans – or 27.2 million people – do not have any health insurance in 2021. That is an improvement from 2020, when 8 .6% of people are uninsured.
The force behind this trend is Medicaid, the public health insurance option for low-income people, census officials told reporters Tuesday.
“The reason Medicaid rates are up is because of the COVID relief bill that Congress passed in March 2020,” Sabrina Corlette of Georgetown University’s Center for Health Insurance Reform.
The Families First Coronavirus Response Act essentially mandates that state Medicaid programs don’t make enrollees eligible for the program – so states can enroll new people but don’t remove anyone. Because of this “continuous enrollment offering,” Medicaid has grown significantly.
Another area of growth is Medicare, though census officials note that’s because more people turn 65 and become eligible, not policy changes.
What happens when pandemic measures are over?
Policy experts say this week’s good news may be fleeting. The extended child tax credit ended in December, just as inflation began climbing to an all-time high. The policy to support many people with health insurance will expire in a few months.
“As soon as the public health emergency is declared – possibly as early as January – the safety net contained in that COVID relief bill will disappear,” Corlette said. “And so we could see this historic increase in the percentage of insureds being reversed.”
According to estimates by the Department of Health and Human Services, more than 15 million people could lose Medicaid released last month. The analysis shows that nearly half of those who lose coverage will be due to administrative issues – such as challenges with filling out paperwork to reapply – rather than because they are no longer eligible. case for insurance. Some will be able to get coverage elsewhere, but millions of others may not be covered.
When it comes to poverty, inflation can start to affect these rates. In fact, one group has seen more poverty in the 2021 numbers, and that’s seniors. Census officials say this is possible because they have fixed incomes, and inflation last year started to run high, really squeezing their budgets.
But again, Census officials stress that Social Security has kept more than 26 million people out of poverty, and that number includes several million children being raised by grandparents.
How to keep profits temporarily
On US trends over time, the Census numbers released Tuesday on child poverty and health insurance are encouraging, experts say, and now, the Policymakers must act to maintain these returns.
“Any improvement we see – whether it’s insurance or poverty – reflects political choices,” he said. Jamila Michener – a government professor at Cornell and a Medicaid expert.
The Biden administration and many Democrats want to extend the child tax credit permanently. The US House of Representatives passed such a measure but it did not survive in the Senate. Some Republican Senators have proposed more restrictive ways to extend the child tax credit.
“What we didn’t know was the trade-off,” said Angela Rachidi, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “We know inflation has picked up considerably over the past year. To what extent all this income transfer has contributed, in my opinion, remains a question.”
Some researchers note that the United States has a long way to go to achieve increases in health and insurance rates, when compared to similar high-income countries.
“[Among] “Our peers, we have one of the highest uninsured rates in the world and poorer health outcomes,” Corlette notes.
One Research turning point in 2013 listed many ways in which Americans are not living as healthy or long lives as people in similarly wealthy countries.
A striking illustration of this is the new life expectancy figure published two weeks ago. Countries around the world have experienced a reduction in life expectancy after the first year of the pandemic, but many have been able to recover.
America doesn’t have – instead it’s longevity decrease in two years in a row, for the first time in America in a century.
