In the United States, the wealthiest nation on earth, nearly 1 in 5 children live in poverty. These children often face inadequate health care and nutrition, untreated illness, unsafe child care, unstable housing and inferior schools. CDF believes permitting more than 12.8 million children to live in poverty when we have the means to prevent it is unjust and unacceptable. It is also economically and socially dangerous: child poverty costs our nation nearly $700 billion a year in lost productivity and extra health and crime costs.

The Children’s Defense Fund’s new edition of our Ending Child Poverty Now report shows our nation can help millions of today’s children escape poverty now by simply improving and investing in existing policies and programs to increase employment, make work pay and meet children’s basic needs. By investing an additional 1.4 percent of the federal budget into these proven policies and programs, our nation can reduce child poverty at least 57 percent, lift 5.5 million …read more

Today, more children in Ohio live in poverty than did before the Great Recession began in 2008. An unacceptable number of Ohio children are also growing up in low-income working families. A disproportionate number are Black and Latino. Poor children often lag behind their peers in many ways beyond income: They are often less healthy, can trail in emotional and intellectual development, and are less likely to graduate from high school. Poor children are more likely to become poor parents. Every year we let children live in poverty, it costs our nation half a trillion dollars in lost productivity and increased health and crime costs.

Our vision is to end child poverty. We must ensure all parents and caregivers have the resources to support and nurture their children: jobs with livable wages, affordable high-quality child care, supports for working families like the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, and safety nets for basic needs like nutrition and housing assistance. We must also ensure every child in Ohio has access to high-quality early childhood development and learning, comprehensive health coverage and care, and quality K-12 education so all children can reach their full potential.

In our annual Annie E. Casey Foundation KIDS COUNT reports, we detail how Ohio children are doing on a variety of child well-being indicators, including poverty. Our KIDS COUNT data shows how children of color and children in Ohio’s Appalachian and rural counties suffer disproportionately from the effects of poverty.