Though distinct, these two measurements are often used by politicians to score points over their political rivals.
Such was the case in September 2023 when the Census Bureau found that the supplemental rate had spiked from 7.8% in 2021 to 12.4% in 2022, the largest increase since 2010.
The same measurement for the share of children living in poverty also hit 12.4%, more than doubling from 5.2% in 2021.
When the numbers were released by the Census Bureau in September 2023, former President Donald Trump immediately attacked President Joe Biden and compared the decline in poverty during his presidency with an increase in poverty during Biden’s term.
But Trump left out key facts.
The supplemental rates did decline from 14% in 2016, before Trump took office in 2017, to 9.2% in his last full year as president in 2020. But the drop was due in large part to coronavirus relief payments that were made available to qualifying people and families during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The relief payments also helped lower the number of people in poverty under the Biden administration.
But those COVID-19 era payments expired in 2021. Without that same aid – and help from Biden’s American Rescue Plan – the share of people considered poor went up in 2022 under Biden. The sharp increase that year came on the heels of the previous year when the percentage of people in poverty was at its lowest level on record.
Temporary relief?
Starting after the Great Depression, U.S. presidents have made reducing poverty a priority in their administrations. Most notably, Franklin D. Roosevelt had the New Deal and Lyndon Johnson had the Great Society.
But thus far during the 2024 presidential campaign, the issue of reducing poverty has been overshadowed by Trump’s legal troubles and Biden’s inability to force an end to the Israel-Hamas war.
In the world’s richest nation, more than 23 million people – a little more than 1 in 10 adults – live in households where there was not enough food to eat, according to the Census Bureau’s March 2024 Household Pulse Survey. And many of these people have jobs.
Despite trillions of U.S. dollars spent on lifting people out of poverty – $1.9 trillion in 2022 alone – it appears the federal government’s ability to provide a safety net for all those in need has fallen short.
As economist Bob Pfeiffer once said: “Our welfare system is designed to make lives more comfortable, not to solve poverty.”
Sherri Lawson Clark has received funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (1999), The Center for Rural Pennsylvania (2005), The Center for Housing Policy (2008), the Strong@Home Partnership (NC) (2016-19). She is affiliated with Financial Pathways of the Piedmont (NC).
Source: The Conversation
