Episode 11: Lifting Children Out of Poverty with Housing Stability and Child Tax Credits with Karen Haycox and Celinda Lake

The Invisible Americans theme by Bridget St. John

Carol Jenkins

Hello, and thanks so much for joining The Invisible Americans Podcast with Jeff Madrick and Carol Jenkins. We address the travesty of child poverty here.

Jeff Madrick

There are nearly 13 million children living in serious material deprivation in America, and we don't see them. They are our invisible Americans, and we plan to change that.

Carol Jenkins

A couple of words about us. The podcast is based on Jeff's book, Invisible Americans: The Tragic Cost of Child Poverty. He's an economics writer, author of seven and co-author of another four books on the American economy.

Jeff Madrick

Carol is an Emmy-winning journalist, activist, and author. Most recently, president of the ERA Coalition working to amend the constitution to include women.

Carol Jenkins

We are longtime colleagues and friends.

The Invisible Americans theme by Bridget St. John

In today's episode of The Invisible Americans: Ending Child Poverty, we take a look at housing again. If you are living in poverty, are you living on the streets, in a shelter, in a badly deteriorating and environmentally dangerous apartment or house, or in an OK house that costs so much you cannot afford to put food on the table? There are so many variations. We will talk with Karen Haycox about the organization Habitat for Humanity and its effort to increase home ownership. 

Jeff Madrick 

And we will also take a look at what the country thinks of the Child Tax Credit, the two versions that were recently introduced in the House and the Senate, with Celinda Lake, one of the country's foremost pollsters, who says America wants to end child poverty.

Carol Jenkins 

We begin with Karen Haycox, who is CEO of Habitat for Humanity in New York City and Westchester and President of the Habitat New York City Community Fund dedicated to providing financial services to economically disadvantaged and underserved communities. We're talking about increasing home ownership, the basis of most generational wealth in the country.

Jeff Madrick 

Most of us know Habitat for Humanity through the fine work of President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalyn Carter. What you may not know is that homeowners often build their homes alongside volunteers and then qualify for and pay an affordable mortgage. Habitat helps them with the house and the mortgage.

Carol Jenkins 

Karen, thanks so much for joining us today. We are thrilled to know more about Habitat for Humanity. As I say, anybody who's working for humanity, we're for you.

Karen Haycox 

We try. We try. I'll tell you that.

Jeff Madrick 

Our broadcast is dedicated to the suffering of children. And a large part of what you guys do, I think, is dedicated to reducing that. What is the priority of your organization when it comes to kids?

Karen Haycox 

For many people, when they think of Habitat for Humanity, just in general, right, you get an image in your head of happy, shiny volunteers swinging hammers and wielding paint brushes, and often adjacent to former US President Jimmy Carter. So every--you know, I like to say that's who we are at our very core, whether that's in New York City or in any of the other 1,100 communities around the United States or 70 countries around the world that Habitat for Humanity works.

And in our case, very specifically affordable homeownership--And that's true in Manhattan, New York. It's also true in Manhattan, Kansas, but really in New York City and increasingly in densely populated urban areas where there tends to be higher concentrations of poverty, with much more complex challenges. Families with children in high-cost environments, what is their housing component?

When you think of New York City--let's just talk about the area that I look after as CEO of Habitat for Humanity, is New York City and Westchester County. We really focus on the needs of families who are by and large doing everything right. They probably have one or more jobs. They're trying to make a living in New York City. They're trying to have stable housing.

And so what Habitat for Humanity does is it reaches in and provides an opportunity for a constituency of people who make enough money that they don't qualify for any kind of subsidized housing, but they can't reach a market solution for their housing. And so we provide a homeownership opportunity, which is a 1% down, 2% fixed mortgage in partnership with those families so we can stabilize their housing. So that's a very long setup.

To answer your question, which is effectively 80% of our homebuyers and our home purchasers in New York City are female heads of household. Now, it is true that single female heads of household are more likely than male heads of household to be raising children, right?

And so we believe fervently to our core that by providing a simple, decent, affordable home, we're kind of the main stage for all kinds of positive outcomes for our children, right? For parents and children. We know anecdotally and through an increasing body of evidence, to be certain, that children who live in stable housing have better academic outcomes, better health and well-being outcomes, better social outcomes. The parents tend towards more stable employment.

So, you know, while you know, you wouldn't maybe specifically see serving children in the mission statement of our organization, we know by evidence, bodies of evidence, that we are making real impact in the lives of children.

Jeff Madrick 

Of course, there are competitive solutions. We support the Child Tax Credit, for example, that Congress abandoned. And in my book, I emphasized that these families need money. You provide them housing subsidies directly, not money, per se.

Karen Haycox 

Housing, the actual structures, not housing subsidies. We provide them with the actual condos, single-family homes, anything. And then, you know, we believe we provide the actual structures and the opportunity for the family to accrue some level of wealth in from their housing versus being significantly rent-burdened, which we know many of the parents of these families are.

Jeff Madrick 

So where would these houses be? Where are they?

Karen Haycox 

We focus on the creation of new housing. In the case of New York City, they’re multifamily, multi-story buildings that we construct, either ourselves as the developer or in partnership with other for-profit developers. The most significant source of public funding comes into Habitat for Humanity, really, through city capital, New York City capital. They invest in affordable housing in New York City, as I'm sure you know.

When we think of affordable housing, we tend to think about rental, you know, whether it's on the lower-income level with things like NYCHA or all the way up the spectrum to some kind of subsidized rental to market rental.

Our sweet spot is really in providing this constituency of people, again, who can't don't qualify for subsidized rental, can't reach a market solution. But now through our model, they can actually purchase a condo, a co-op. Or sometimes I've got rehabilitated homes around New York City through an affordable mortgage and keep their housing costs to about 33% of their monthly income. So that frees up some of their additional capital to stabilize their housing.

So where are they? They're in Brooklyn. They're in Manhattan. They're scattered throughout Queens. Lots of work in the Bronx. In Westchester County, we're just getting started. So we're tending towards trying to stabilize senior housing communities in Westchester County right now. So they're really everywhere.

We try--we seek to either develop where there's opportunity to develop new housing or stabilize existing affordable housing. That's another big area where we focus. Many, many of these families are living in substandard housing now. That is contributing to their negative health outcomes or certainly their negative financial outcomes.

So we really seek to meet these families where they are and stabilize their housing as the mainstay for all of these other possible outcomes.

Jeff Madrick 

Broad portfolio.

Karen Haycox 

We're a simple mission with a very complex methodology for delivering it. I mean, it's New York City. What else would we expect, right? We're a complicated, complicated environment.

Carol Jenkins 

Karen, I know that you are interested--and Habitat for Humanity is interested in sort of fixing the inequality that exists in home ownership. And one of the things that I saw is that MacKenzie Scott has taken you all on as one of her favorites and given--what is it, $436 million? And that is specifically for Black home ownership. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Karen Haycox 

So where Mackenzie Scott's gift, she chose--I might get this wrong. I think it's about 86 communities around the nation where she spread that $436 million--half a billion, if you want to round up. And one of them was not New York City.

Listen, I'm a lifetime Habitater. I've been at this for a long time, and when this gift came through, it was transformational for all of my colleagues around the nation. But I will, I will admit to calling my colleague in Los Angeles who got $20 million in Los Angeles and said, gee whiz, that was spent awfully nicely 10 on the East Coast and on the West Coast.

So, Miss Scott, if you're listening, you know, you missed a really creative Habitat for Humanity in New York City. And her capital really would have gone a long way to building and to creating and preserving existing homeownership for Black homeowners right here in the New York City area, you know? More than 95% of current homeowners, we work on preserving their units. So think about the low-income cooperatives scattered around New York City--95% of those preservation clients identify as people of color, and they're in some risk of distress of losing their housing.

And so what better than for us to enter in and try and stabilize them where they are, trying to stabilize the buildings? Again, to the complexity of our model in New York City is in addition to this simple Habitat that everybody thinks of, we're also a general contractor. So we can go in and help them with scopes of work on their multifamily buildings that preserve hundreds of homeowners with one intervention, like roofing.

Think about roof leaks or fire escapes or fire systems or heating systems, some of these aging cooperative buildings. But many people, New Yorkers associate the co-op model with New York. It's scattered around the country, but we're pretty much, you know, the center of this co-op. So housing co-op is effectively--Someone who purchases in a co-op, you own your unit within a multifamily building, and you own a share of the overall building.

And so your payment per month looks like, you know, a modest payment towards the ownership of your apartment and also the maintenance of your multifamily building. In the late ‘70s, New York City owned a lot of--they were the greatest public landlord, I believe. And they wanted to get out of the business being a landlord. So they created this model.

I'm totally oversimplifying, but they sold, effectively, these buildings to their low-income residents, you know? The Bronx was burning. Nobody cared. No one thought that, you know, housing was ever going to be worth anything anymore. So they kind of got out of the business, sold these units, created the co-op model and kind of gave them a primer on how to run a multifamily building, create a resident board address, your common area charges, the physical needs of your building, and everything will be fine.

And some of those co-op buildings did great. And they last, and they’re stable to this day. Others of them maybe didn't do so great. And so we really intervene in these co-op models and really work with those homeowners to correct maybe decades of challenges around their maintenance of their building. So there's some really interesting and innovative ways in which we utilize our brand, our resources, our volunteers, and our expertise, our skilled labor and expertise to stabilize multiple units of long-term homeownership, many of whom are people of color. And, you know, I don't have to tell you about the real--you know, we're trying to--this is not a perfect solution to decades of racist housing policy. These are limited equity structures.

People who look like me, considering we're on camera, I’ll self-identify as a white woman. I happen to be a member of the LGBT community. Thank God that gives me a little bit of street cred, but not much. But people who look like me, you know, or my parents, for instance, benefited from veterans that, you know, they didn't have their equity in their housing impeded over decades. And so, you know, I've benefited arguably, from that, you know, I was able to they were able to use the wealth that they accrue from their house, it to put me through school, etc. Many of our people of color around this country didn't have that opportunity.

So we really are trying to do what we can with what we have where we are to try and put housing back on the radar for communities of color in and around New York City. It isn't a perfect solution, but it puts them onto the housing continuum so that 10 or 15 years down the road, they've accrued some wealth that will give them additional choices, for instance, with the wealth that they've accrued in their house.

Carol Jenkins 

So that in this metropolitan area where you are working, most of your clients are women of color with kids, and in this sphere, you are trying to fix the inequality in housing. So talk to us a little bit more about some of the people who are in your portfolio.

Karen Haycox 

We're talking about bus drivers and teachers and dry cleaners and baristas and emergency response personnel. These, you know, we talk a lot about the fact that these people that are partnering with us to purchase their homes are not people other than those we walk past and engage with all day long every day in the city.

I like to say they're the people that open the city for us in the morning and close it for us at night. And yet they're in substandard housing, pushed farther and farther away from their places of work. Sometimes, they're making unconscionable choices around sharing housing. And then statistically, something to the tune of over 50% of New Yorkers--or low- and middle-income New Yorkers are rent-burdened significantly.

Rent-burdened, paying more than 50% of their monthly income towards shelter. So in our model, it's a homeownership mode, and their costs are capped at 33% for all of their shelter. So, you know, they would have their mortgage payment, their common area charges, their utility charges goes from--let's call it 50% to 33%.

So month over month without changing anything, they've got more expendable income to support the needs of the family. In our model because it's homeownership, they're paying down a mortgage. So after a period of time, they would--if they sell that unit, they receive some portion back from that mortgage, whatever they've paid down, and they also receive a share of the appreciated value. So there's sort of three equity structures, three--we like to say there's three versions of pocket equity that a low-income person participating in our program can benefit from and as well as the health outcomes that result from being in an affordable, safe, decent, well-maintained unit, right?

So it's complicated, but it's simple. At its very core, housing, we think, is central to so many outcomes. It's just how we get there in New York City is, as I said, surprisingly complicated.

Jeff Madrick 

How do people sign up?

Karen Haycox 

We actually market through the housing portal. So when we have a building that is ready for sale, we usually meet. We do a series of community meetings with the community board, with the elected officials and make people in the community aware that the building is ready to go to market.

Here's what it takes to apply. Let's review the application process. What documentation do you need to have? How do you validate your income, all of the things that, you know, we all know when we go to a bank, we have to have ready but can be a bit daunting, specifically for low- and middle-income families that aren’t accustomed to banks. Listen, banks can give the best of us, you know, the heebie jeebies, right?

So we try and create some--we try and really educate the populations around, here comes the building, this is what it means to apply. This is what you should have ready. Then because this is the city of New York, they run their housing projects as a lottery. I have a specific aversion to the term lottery because many people can associate, you know, getting a Habitat house as winning the lottery. We don't like that. We don't like that comparison at all because our families are very much engaged in the work that we do.

But there is a housing lottery that is organized through the marketing department at the city. So after we've trained in these communities around marketing, the marketing portal will open. Interested homeowners go to the portal. They're familiar with the application. They submit all of their application process. We receive from the marketing agent at the city a select list of partners that are prospective homebuyers who are who have successfully completed their application.

That's the number one barrier, getting through the application process successfully and providing all of their background information. And then we begin the process of screening and meeting with them and talking with them about what it means to be a homeowner, what it means to be a Habitat homeowner. And that's how we get there.

We do meetings with the homeowners, homebuyers. We do technical assistance and training all through the home purchase process. And we're also available post-purchase to support families once they exist in these homes.

I don't know about you, but the first time I bought a home, I mean, the person who sold it to me went through and explained all the things and the systems and how they worked, and then they left. And I went, I have no idea how to turn the furnace on, you know? So we're sort of there after the fact to kind of address the questions.

Carol Jenkins 

Karen, so much of what we know about Habitat for Humanity we did learn from President and Rosalynn Carter. I hope you can give us an update on how he's doing. And, you know, what your thoughts are now.

Karen Haycox 

it is the honor of my life to have to sit before you and tell you that I have had the opportunity--when I say I worked with President Carter, I swung a hammer next to him on a number of houses. And that is the--that is like the gold medal of all Habitat things is to be qualified to actually build alongside the Carters, President and Mrs. Carter.

And so currently, of course, you know, with the recent announcement, I can say that our heart, that my heart, and my prayers are aimed at the entirety of the Carter family. The insider information is that he's home. He's comfortable. He's eating peanut butter ice cream. He's on the land where he was born with the people that he loves most in the world. And he is just a man of true faith. He walks his faith. He is a man who just really, truly wants to leave us all better than he found us.

And again, I can't say it enough. It has been the honor of my life, certainly, to be--to have the kind of interactions with him that I have, and Habitat for Humanity as an organization, it is undeniable that we would not be the organization that we are, as well-known as we are around the world were it not for the engagement of President and Mrs. Carter. And that started right here in New York City, you should know, right on the lower on the Lower East Side on Sixth Street,

Carol Jenkins 

New York, New York, isn't it? Karen, thank you so much for being with us.

Karen Haycox 

Thank you for letting me tell you the story of housing and how I hope people can see that it is a natural impact for child poverty around the world. But thank you both for what you're doing to amplify the voices of children around the country and around the world.

The Invisible Americans theme by Bridget St. John

Carol Jenkins 

Celinda Lake is one of the foremost pollsters in the country, the founder of Lake Research Partners in 1995, and consistently ranked among the most accurate.

Jeff Madrick 

We were very much interested in her polling on the Child Tax Credit, recently reintroduced by Senator Michael Bennet in the Senate and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro in the House, along with partners. This interview took place near the end of 2022. But we thought it important to review it again as the CTC moves forward legislatively.

Carol Jenkins 

Celinda Lake, thank you so much for being with us today. You've done some amazing polling on the Child Tax Credit. Jeff, I think you want to start off this round of questioning.

Jeff Madrick 

Hey, thank you, Carol, and thank you for joining us. It's a great treat to have you. What are people now thinking about how to solve child poverty? It's certainly changed a lot in the last couple of years.

Celinda Lake 

It has changed a lot. And thank you all so much for having me. And thank you for asking this really, really important question. And I think many of us were quite frustrated that we had a very popular mechanism, the Child Tax Credit, and that we took it away.

And honestly, I think that was really surprising to me. And it takes a lot to surprise me anymore in politics, but I didn't think we would throw children back in poverty.

Carol Jenkins

And we actually have, right?

Celinda Lake

We actually have--three and a half million kids thrown back into poverty.

The Child Tax Credit is so popular, as popular as a tax cut is for middle and working-class families. It's popular to help the children. It's popular when juxtaposed against tax rates for the wealthy and big corporations. It’s popular as an answer to inflation. So it's just very, very popular with the voters.

So after the tax credit was done away with, we went back into look at the 2024 electorate and found really astounding levels of support for the Child Tax Credit. We found that 75% of people favored it. Only 19% opposed it. Half of the people favored it strongly. And that included 86% of Democrats, 77% of independents, and 64% of Republicans who favored the Child Tax Credit.

What was also interesting about that data was only 28% of the voters in 2022 were people with children under 18. So support for the Child Tax Credit extends far beyond the people who are directly affected. And that's something that has not been given enough attention to the way that we formulated the tax credit and talked about it.

We talked about it as an expanded and improved tax cuts that refunds poor working and middle-class families, more money for each child under 18, creates a larger tax cut for families with children under six, and makes the credit fully available for all families with low incomes.

Jeff Madrick 

That, to me, was always the highlight. It goes to all families, even the lowest income families who didn't qualify before.

Celinda Lake 

Yes, that was important to the public, too. And what's interesting is, even when we explicitly raised that there had been conventional wisdom that it said--when you make it clear that it's low-income families, although it helps all the way up to middle-class families, that people won't like it. Well, no, quite the contrary. 75% of people liked it, 52% strongly.

Jeff Madrick 

Why did it get thrown out? How did it attract political support? I know a lot of this had to do with Machin and inflation. But there was something deeper?

Celinda Lake 

I think, number one, that a lot of people didn't appreciate that it was being done away with. And one of the things we know, the good elements and the bad, frankly, that people--because these packages were so big and rapid-fire, people never completely got clear about what the contents were. And they also got confused around the Child Tax Credit.

They confused it, whether it was permanent to begin with, or whether it was something that was just temporary COVID relief package. But again, I really believed--and I second your question. I thought once we got that many children out of poverty, we would not throw them back into poverty. And yet we did.

And we did with a lot of people not appreciating that we were doing that. And then I the machinations of Manchin and what he was willing and not willing to do and what we had the votes for.

But it was not--and I want to underscore--that it was not because of public pressure. It was not a reflection of the voters’ will. This was going on behind closed doors among elites, not among voters.

Carol Jenkins 

And Celinda, is it true that most of the children who are adversely affected now by the absence of the Child Tax Credit are Black and brown?

Celinda Lake 

Disproportionately? Yes, unfortunately. And it's really interesting because so much of the conversation and the anti—the old-fashioned welfare conversation resurrected itself. And yet one of the biggest reasons for supporting the Child Tax Credit was a shared value across all races, that all children deserve opportunity, no matter their class or ZIP code.

So people are so far ahead of the elites here. And frankly, it's one of the reasons why I appreciate your show, is that real people are so far ahead of the elite and the media conversation, it’s shameful.

Jeff Madrick 

We found a lot of skepticism among those who might qualify for this. One, a few people said something like it's too good to be true.

Celinda Lake 

Well, and sadly and ironically, a lot of the recipients felt that it wouldn't stay. They thought first it was too good to be true. And then once that happened, it wouldn't last. And sadly that's where we are in the situation, that it did not last. And I think when, really, the public angry is when you juxtapose this one tax break for families against all of the tax breaks that we give to the wealthy and big corporations, the number of profitable corporations that pay zero in taxes.

The fact that a number of conservative candidates and Donald Trump promised to reinstate his tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations if reelected--it's shocking, honestly, that we can have all of these tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations and billionaires and do away with the one tax credit we put in for families with children.

And real people thought that was absolutely wrong. It was one of the strongest arguments for the Child Tax Credit. And they also felt that when you do away with the Child Tax Credit, the people you're hurting the most are children. So the public gets this. It's the elites that are way, way behind the public.

Jeff Madrick 

You wrote a lot about how people didn't quite understand how it works. Should we take an opportunity right now to tell them quickly what the benefits are?

Celinda Lake 

We looked a lot at how--you know, we live in a nine-second-soundbite world and 144-character world, we try to figure out, how can we tell people what's in it? Because it's pretty complicated package because of the different tiers. How do we tell people what's in it and explain it to people?

And you've got expanding it. You've got improving it. You've got reinstating it. You've got different tiers for depending on the age of your kids, et cetera. But again, people really responded to tax cuts, a  refunds for poor, working, and middle-class families, more money for each child under 18, a larger tax cut that if you have a child under six, and makes the credit fully available, for all families with low incomes. Bam, we're done. We're out.

And once it disappeared, I think more and more families got familiar with it. So there are a lot of people who now understand it. And we have, out of this research, achieved a pretty simple, fast explanation for it that is wildly positive.

Carol Jenkins 

Celinda, it's always amazing to me that the general public would not be up in arms and alarm to know that food insecurity would increase for children that, you know, homelessness, you know, there would be unhoused, et cetera, that all of these problems, you know, we're going to be facing a gigantic population. And yet there was no public outcry. It was just silent, just went away.

Celinda Lake 

It’s very frustrating. And it speaks to how the voters are ill-served. First of all, the voters are so unhappy right now. And they're unhappy with lots of things. So that's part of it. It's very, very hard to break through. It was hard to break through. It's what was the content of the packages, and then very hard to break through as what were the changes. The other thing we find--Carol, it's such a good question that you asked--for the voters, opposition is often not our problem. Maybe we'll have a quarter or a third of the voters who oppose something. In this case, it’s down to 19%.

Cynicism is our problem. Voters are beaten down. And they often feel like promises are made in elections. They're not kept. You offer something with one hand and take it away with the other, and yet people who can afford lobbyists and corporations and billionaires get everything they want, no matter how unfair it is. And so it is cynicism, I think, that's working against us.

We didn't have opposition arise for the public because they didn't understand what was going on and because they were so cynical about the process. This is something--the people who won, this is something that they can say in this session after the elections. I heard you. I delivered for you. I hear you. I see you, and I hear you. And that is really important messaging, no matter what party you're in, to get reelected.

Jeff Madrick 

One of the points you raise is people are afraid of the government. They're afraid to sign up, especially if the IRS is involved. It's that an important issue?

Celinda Lake 

People are afraid of the IRS. They are also afraid of the immigration service.

Jeff Madrick

Right, of course.

Celinda Lake

So they're afraid of both. They're afraid of how they'll impact other benefits. They're afraid of how they will be, like, if grandma's taking care of the grandkids right now. And Grandma wants to sign up. They’re afraid of how that will affect other benefits.

But even with all of that going on, people still overwhelmingly supported it and overwhelmingly signed up, particularly moms. Moms really signed up for it. And we had even homeless moms trying to sign up for it, as they should have. They were eligible.

Of course, there is some fear out there. The Republicans and the conservatives have tried to stoke that fear. They've tried to say that these measures have this many IRS agents coming on board, et cetera.

Well, right now, the favorability of the IRS is actually 67%. The American public likes the IRS. The IRS is more popular than most of the politicians who are going against the IRS. And real people have a little bit of common sense. They think the IRS isn't coming after me. The IRS agents are being hired to go after the wealthy and the big corporations.

Now, immigration is a different story. And that's something we really do have to emphasize. But the fear of the IRS was the Republicans tried to stoke that, but it didn't work very well.

Carol Jenkins 

So I know you don't--you sort of gauge where people are at what they're thinking, and you're not usually in the prediction, but in terms of getting it reinstated in some way, lame duck and then having another go around making it permanent the next time. What's your read on that?

 Celinda Lake 

I don't know. But I think that all of your listeners really have to send the message in because these elected officials are surrounded by a lot of noise and a lot of misinformation. And the first thing I would say is remember that 75% number. The Child Tax Credit is more popular than every member of Congress, Democrat or Republican. So that's point number one to make.

People have no--elected officials have no idea. And then they also think that their voters are not focused on it because only 28% of the voters had children under 18. In fact, it's as you said, Carol. I find it appalling in the United States of America that a child goes to bed hungry.

We can do something about that. We are the United States of America, for goodness sakes. Some things we may not be able to accomplish anymore. But that we should be able to deal with. And I think that the Child Tax Credit is very popular whether you have children or not, whether you have grandchildren or not. We need to speak up. We need to make clear to our elected officials. Here's something very concrete, it is doable, because we did it already. It worked just fine.

We got three and a half million children out of poverty. We need to do it again.

Jeff Madrick 

What do you say to people like Manchin, who will say it's just too expensive?

Celinda Lake 

It's sad. It's sad because his state would have benefited, as you know, more than mos. It is not too expensive. What's too expensive are the tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations. The Trump tax cuts are too expensive. This is not too expensive. This is something we can do. And the public is 75% in favor of it.

Carol Jenkins 

Celinda Lake, thank you so much for being with us today.

Celinda Lake 

Thank you for having me. And thanks for your good questions. And thank you for bringing this to the forefront.

The Invisible Americans theme by Bridget St. John

Jeff Madrick

History will judge the nation's decency in various ways, one of them will surely be the well-being of all its children. American neglect of its poor children is both inexplicable and deplorable. By basic measures, it has the highest child poverty rate among rich nations in the world. A generation of careful academic research has shown how damaging this has been to children's cognition, health, nutrition, and future wages. And 2021 Congress and the president adopted an enlightened program that expanded the Child Tax Credit and made it available to almost all children no matter their race, ethnicity, or how little their parents earned. The results were stunning, cutting the poverty rate by half. But Congress refused to renew the program. In coming months, this podcast will examine the future of the Child Tax Credit and other key policies to protect children from the destructiveness of poverty. We are dedicated to restoring a bright and optimistic future for all children in this land long celebrated for equal opportunity.

Carol Jenkins 

Thanks today to Karen Haycox of Habitat for Humanity, New York City and Westchester, and to Celinda Lake of Lake Research Partners. You can find transcripts, show notes, bios, and links on our website, www.theinvisibleamericans.com. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and we now have our own channel on YouTube. Look for The Invisible Americans. Thanks so much for being with us. Jeff and I will see you the next time.

‍