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

Our guests today are Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro and Houston Food Bank President Brian Greene. They are both veteran leaders in the fight against poverty in the United States. Rosa DeLauro has fought for more than 20 years for an expanded Child Tax Credit. Unconditional cash payments to families, no matter how little the parents earn. Brian Greene's food bank feeds a million people a year in the Houston area, and most of those people are working, but they're working at jobs that simply don't pay enough to put adequate amounts of food on the table.

Jeff Madrick:

We begin with Connecticut Congresswoman DeLauro. In 2021, her Child Tax Credit wish came true. The bill she had worked on for years went into effect, and 5 million children were lifted out of poverty. It was a brief reprieve. When it was ended by Congress, the children's poverty rate rose rapidly. Characteristically, DeLauro is trying again. Here's our conversation.

Carol Jenkins:

Thank you so much, Congresswoman DeLauro, for coming on. I called you our Shero for so many years, being concerned about our children and fighting poverty. Thank you so much for being with us.

Rosa DeLauro:

Thank you. Let's set some ground rules. My name is Rosa, so let's go. You don't have to start. I wasn't baptized congresswoman, so there we go.

Jeff Madrick:

Believe it or not, I was baptized Jeffrey. Probably the only person ever baptized Jeffrey. In any case, people have been fighting for an expanded Child Tax Credit for so long and for so hard that once it passed, it was an extraordinary relief, and we all celebrated. Then Congress knocked it down. What was your reaction personally to that?

Rosa DeLauro:

First of all, I have to say thank you to the two of you though, but I think that when you write about the Invisible Americans and The Tragic Cost of Child Poverty, there really is such a reality about that in terms of the economic or the financial stability, not only of the families, but the financial stability of the country. It is just so critically important. I started to wage the fight on the Child Tax Credit in 2003. It got to 18 years to get it to be a part of the American Rescue Plan. I wanted it to be permanent in that document. Then he said, "No, we can't make it permanent."

I said, "Okay, then let's do it for five years."

Then he said, "We can't do that."

"Three years."

Then it went down to one year. And I made the argument over and over again that this wasn't enough time in a year for one to really feel the full effect of a Child Tax Credit so that it could be in the position of people not wanting to tamper with it in the same way they won't tamper with Social Security.

But I was told that once it happens, it's going to be so well received that nobody is going to want to change it or do it in, et cetera. That's hogwash. But I'll tell you what I wasn't willing to do, not to take the ball and go home. One year, I'm going to take it. So we can go forward and to get that tax credit out on a monthly basis so that it could feel that right away.

Jeff Madrick:

What's your plan now to go forward on the tax credit?

Rosa DeLauro:

My fight is still to make it permanent every single day. And every time I see the president or every time I talk to his staff people, I'm going to get to the point where they walk away because they know what I'm going to say about the permanent Child Tax Credit. But the president's budget has the tax credit in there. It is refundable. It goes at a $3,000 level for kids six to 17, and it's got the $3,600 for kids that are under six years old, and it is until 2025. Again, I want it permanent, but 2025 is a year when so many of the other tax credits, the tax advantages, are due. So I think that gives us a chance to have some real leverage in being able to move this. In the meantime, we're going to have to make a fight.

Look, the fact of the matter, it wasn't just one Democrat that held this up. We have none of the Republicans. Republicans are not there. If they want to do something like that, they want to take the money from Social Security, they want to put so many bells and whistles on it that it makes it impossible for people.

Carol Jenkins:

How do you feel about the prospects for this two-year session of getting this done? What are the likely prospects?

Rosa DeLauro:

We don't have the numbers on the House side. We just don't have the numbers. I suspect you still have the same problem on the Senate side here. But you know what I always find powerful? Is the external pressure on the institution. Your students of all of this. When the public begins to stand up, react, and get to their members and tell them that this is what we want you to do. If you don't, you have a price to pay.

That is the kind of effort that we really need right now: an external, aggressive campaign that lets members of the House and Senate know how important this is. There has not been a federal program, in my view, that has had the success that the Child Tax Credit had in a short period of time it met the vision of the program. We haven't seen that, lifting 4 million kids out of poverty, almost half the kids out of out of poverty. The hunger rate in the country declines. You have tangible proof. People went back to work because they could afford childcare. They bought essentials. All those naysayers who demean people, and they say, "Oh, they're going to dog it. They're not going to go to work." A Democrat said they're going to spend it on drugs. What a terrible view they have of people who are struggling every single day to make ends meet.

Jeff Madrick:

That's a key point. There's a terrible view of poor people. That they're irresponsible. That they won't take care of their kids. And this was such a success. It's quite amazing that they let it go. Amazing to me anyway.

Rosa DeLauro:

It is. When you hear from the people who participated, by the way, one, they said, "We weren't going to do this." Secondly, when we talked about doing it on a monthly basis, "Oh no, you can't do it. You can't do it." I have to compliment the IRS. They did it. They got it done on a monthly basis. And that is the key. Nobody pays their bills every year, once a year. You pay your bills on a monthly basis. But the naysayers, they said, "We couldn't get this in the American Rescue Plan. We couldn't do it on a monthly basis." And then they said that people, they were going to stay home from work and that they weren't going to spend it on essentials for their families. All of which was disproved. All of which from the get-go. I'm never one to give up. I don't quit. You can't quit. The stakes are too high. So we'll continue at it.

The president talks about making it permanent, but now we have to have the political will to get it done. I think that that political will can be held by massive external pressure on the institution.

Carol Jenkins:

Right. We were among those jumping up and down with glee to find it there, and so many other family-friendly positions as well.

Rosa DeLauro:

Paid leave?

Carol Jenkins:

Exactly. Paid leave, pre- K, and affordable childcare, all of the things, as you say, get in the way of people leading successful, productive work lives in so many cases.

Rosa DeLauro:

This is not rocket science. You say in Invisible Americans, it is about plain and simple providing the financial resources to families, which I like so much about. The way we constructed the tax credit is that 90% of kids got the same benefit. It's very similar like Social Security that everyone can take, can utilize it. That's what I think helps to even this out. We've got middle-class families, which was a lifeline to middle class families, low-income families, the most vulnerable families, all of whom could really take advantage of this influx of resources to help change their lives.

Jeff Madrick:

Absolutely. That's our joy over this. A recognition that poor people know how to spend their money…

Rosa DeLauro:

Thank you

Jeff Madrick:

... which I think too many Americans have been biased against that notion, including some prominent Democratic senators as we know.

Rosa DeLauro:

Amen. Jeff, it makes me cringe the way I see them demean hardworking people.

Jeff Madrick:

Yep.

Rosa DeLauro:

Some with two jobs and trying to take care of themselves. It's no sound bite to say today's families live paycheck to paycheck. They barely can keep their head above water. We had some of the comments that came from folks which were sad. They said, "We were able to buy groceries, able to put food on the table. And now with it gone, I'm going to struggle to feed my kids. I'm not going to eat, but my kids have got to get fed." And I would add this to what you've said, Jeff, much of this is premised on values, and that there's no respect for the values that poor people have, what drives them, and what makes them really work as hard as they do.

Jeff Madrick:

It's the American tragedy.

Rosa DeLauro:

It is the American tragedy. You watch people like Paul Ryan talk about folks in hammocks. I had the chance to write a book several years ago, The Least Among Us: Waging the Battle for the Vulnerable. I looked at how our social safety net was crafted. It was Democrats and Republicans who came together that said that there's a challenge that we have in this country, whatever it was. Despite our own philosophies, our own political beliefs, we have to try to tackle it. We did that with food assistance associated with McGovern-Dole, folks in housing, and so forth. They came together, and they said, "You needed to do something." That is missing today.

Carol Jenkins:

We wanted to get your reaction to a proposal that every child who is born should be given $1000. I think they considered $1000 bond as an investment in their future. What do you think about that? I know it may be a step too far on this day, but do you think that has promise?

Rosa DeLauro:

What I concluded after looking at various proposals or efforts, the thing that struck me, and again, we get to, with the Child Tax Credit, a universal assistance for people. So I'm fixed on this, and I think it's a good way to do it, but I'm for proposals that look to help provide guaranteed income for families. It's interesting that European countries have figured this out in many, many ways. Somehow, we can't get to it.

Carol Jenkins:

Why do you think that is? It just seems so counterintuitive that the least financed families can't get this kind of support. It's like you're too poor to get assistance in this country. It doesn't make any sense.

Rosa DeLauro:

That's the problem with the current Child Tax Credit. We leave out a third of families and the lowest-income families, whether they're minimum-wage families that have a large number of children, veterans, military families, et cetera. It's pretty extraordinary that we would do that to the people who need it the most. When I told you I looked into the social safety net, there had been moments when the Child Tax Credit had bipartisan support. Newt Gingrich, he talked about $1000, then he moved it back to $500, et cetera. There was bipartisan support. I think it's how people view the role of government and how should government step in or should government step in to these arenas, I obviously, and you do. I believe that government plays a very strong role that we have to when people facing the challenges that are overwhelming.

That happened fairly well with the American Rescue Plan. I began to listen to people in my own community saying, "Thank God for the federal government, the business communities." When the heck did we ever hear that? There is a very positive role. I think that the Child Tax Credit, for me, is where it's at. But again, I've listened to the arguments that unless you put the severest restrictions on families, people just don't want to go for it. They say, "No, we can't get there." We don't put the severest restrictions on the richest one-tenth of 1% of the people in this country.

Jeff Madrick:

Like a requirement to invest in America.

Rosa DeLauro:

Bingo. They buy back their stock. We gave them a $1.7 trillion bonus here of a tax cut here. Then I've got people selling me the Child Tax Credit as the deficit. Give me a break.

Jeff Madrick:

As you know, the European nations, many of which have something like the Child Tax Credit, don't have restrictions on what the parents can spend on or should spend on. Very careful research shows that. And yet we have Democratic senators who insist that money will be wasted.

Rosa DeLauro:

That's right. They said to me directly, Jeff, I've had the conversation, "The money will be used on drugs." Hogwash. No, if you think about childcare, state of Connecticut, it's about $15,000 to $18,000 per child. If we don't have affordable childcare or parents can't afford to send their kids to childcare, our economy will collapse. That happened during the pandemic with women. Women were pushed out of the workforce. They didn't opt out. And they couldn't afford childcare. These are the best examples. So what did they do with that monthly benefit? They paid for childcare, and then they went to work. They didn't stay home. They went to work.

Carol Jenkins:

Rosa DeLauro, we thank you for the hard, consistent, persistent work that you've done for America's children. And we hope the American Family Act has great success this time around. And we are here to support in whatever way we can. We hope you'll come back and give us a progress report.

Rosa DeLauro:

We will. I'll say I looked at that social safety net and how it was crafted, but it's time for a new social safety net. That includes a Child Tax Credit, equal pay for equal work, men and women in the same job deserve the same pay, paid family and medical leave, affordable childcare. These are the efforts because the changing nature of what our families look like today, everyone is in the workforce because no one's staying home if someone gets sick. Since men and women are in the workforce, why aren't men and women in the same job pay the same amount of money? Why do caregivers can't go to work if they stay home with their families or they get sick that they don't have a job or they can't be paid, or we can't look at a Child Tax Credit and help people with their needs when we know how successful these projects should be? For me, it is a new social safety net that we need to craft in this country. And we need to really galvanize around that kind of an effort and move that forward.

Jeff Madrick:

Rosa, it's an honor to know you.

Rosa DeLauro:

Thank you. And the same with you. Thank you. Thank you, thank you.

Carol Jenkins:

Thank you so much.

Rosa DeLauro:

Take care.

The Invisible Americans theme by Bridget St. John

Jeff Madrick:

The Houston Food Bank is the largest in the United States, feeding more than a million people a year. Brian Greene is running a huge enterprise aimed at keeping hunger and starvation at bay.

Carol Jenkins:

But he is faced with the fact that instead of decreasing, hunger and food insecurity continue to rise. Now inflation presents new problems. As we've seen in news reports, there are now mile-long lines at food banks, sometimes taking nine hours to complete. Here's our conversation with Brian Greene.

Brian, thank you so much for being with us today. I had the great honor of spending some time volunteering in your Houston Food Bank and was amazed by the sheer number of people by the organization. It is like an enormous, huge warehouse full of good hope and good things that you're doing out there. If you could tell us the machinery of it, how do you feed a million people?

Brian Greene:

Carol, thank you so much for having me on your show. Food banks actually started over four decades ago. The thinking was, if you look at how much hunger there is in America and you look at how much food waste there is in America, there's actually way more food waste than there is hunger. I started in the early days of food banking, and I can tell you that our thinking was that if we just did enough of this, that we would set up these distribution centers essentially, that would go pursue the surplus food and then channel it through a network of charities. If you just did enough of that, you wouldn't have hunger. So we've set up systems that do exactly that. We have fleets of trucks like Houston Food Bank, for instance. We run about 70 trucks a day. We're picking up from the supermarkets. We're picking up from farms, we're picking up from wholesalers, produce vendors, you name it. We pull in and we're distributing to about 1600 different partners to try and get this food out to families and other initiatives.

I can tell you that from having done that, no, it doesn't. We did not solve hunger. We're actually doing enough food now. This food bank alone does about 14 tractor trailer loads of surplus food a day distributing out into the community, helping families. We serve close to a million people. You still have pretty much the same amount of hunger in the United States as I have when I started. That's the mechanics of it. But the part that I think was wrong in our thinking is, we thought that we could treat hunger as its own issue. It's not. Food insecurity isn't about food. Food insecurity is about income.

A family that is struggling to get by, there's not just one thing they're struggling to afford, they're struggling to get by, period. And food tends to be their most flexible expense. You can pay 90% of your food costs. You can't pay 90% of your utility bill. You can't pay 90% of a medical costs. There's so many things that you don't have control over how much you're paying. Food tends to be the flexible, and that's why you see food insecurity and hunger. But it also means that as we're trying to help these families, if we think of the gap as just a meal gap, we're misunderstanding the problem. We're misidentifying. We're understating it because it really is how much are they income insecure. That's the driver.

Now, it is nice. This is what makes the food banks work so well, quite frankly, the feeding of American food banks all over the country, there is so much for food surplus that it is a great resource. So collectively, the food banks around the country are providing literally billions of dollars’ worth of assistance to help these families, and that's great. They're a lot better off than they would be, but it's not enough to overcome how much their gap is because they're just not making enough money to get by. And these are overwhelmingly working households. Two-thirds of the food-insecure households in the US having a working adult. They're working. Their wages are not enough to get by.

Jeff Madrick:

Brian, it's Jeff Madrick here. Congratulations on your extraordinary success in building such a large operation. But then you talk about how you can't cure food insecurity. What's the goal? If you have enough food, what's the goal? How do you get there?

Brian Greene:

The way we look at it now is, there is this food waste, and it is a resource, and for goodness's sake, we should do the best we can to provide this, the families. But we're looking at it as like, "How do we do this in a way that causes the most impact?" In the early days of food banking, we were trying to shovel the food out the door to get into these households. That was good. We now think more in terms of, "What are the initiatives? What are the partnerships that we can use this resource that has a significant dollar value?" In Houston Food Bank's case, it's over $200 million worth of resources a year. How do we cause the most impact? One of the models that we like a great deal we call food scholarships. We work with mostly community colleges but also a number of universities. And we target, with their help, they target the students who are struggling financially.

The reality is, what we're really trying to solve is their dropping out. You think about, with the community colleges, they've got those middle-skill certificate programs like HVAC repair, mechanics, truck driving, welding, medical technician. These are all degree programs that have a living-wage job almost guaranteed upon graduation. Completion of the program, thousands and thousands of people signed up for them. They start only about 40% complete. That's the tragedy. So what we're trying to do with the food resource is, instead of just being there as an emergency safety net is -- how do we make a commitment to that student like a financial scholarship where we're going to give? What we shoot for is $2,000 worth of food, like a cash scholarship that is like food rights at one of the food markets where you can go shop for the food, it's all free for them, to financially stabilize them with a goal of keeping them in the program. So that's how we're more thinking about our work.

We call this shorten the line. Originally, the concept of food banks, we were all about serve the line. More and more food banks are saying, "Okay, we're going to continue to serve the line, but we really want to try and focus more on what can we do to shorten the line with these creative partnerships." But I want to be real clear on that. We will not end the line by shortening it enough. The reality is, many of these middle-skills jobs that people are getting trained for, when you look at what's happening with artificial intelligence and robotics, they may not be here in 20 years. They might not be here in 10 years in many cases. Ultimately, this has to be about how do we ensure that everyone is able to have enough income to get by as we, as a society, get richer and richer?

Carol Jenkins:

Brian, you know that our focus on this podcast is the children and the millions of children in this country who are food insecure. I love, again, what you've done, is create several routes to providing them with food. We all know about lunch programs, but you have elaborated on that gift as well. Can you talk a little bit about the impoverished children that you're feeding?

Brian Greene:

The first thing to point out is, food banks are not the largest child hunger fighters in America. It's the schools or the number one child hunger fighting program in America. The school lunch and breakfast program and making sure that that's maximized throughout the communities. It's amazing how tough a battle that's been where we know that when they're providing universal lunch and breakfast, it helps all the kids. It destigmatizes the kids who, the lower-income families, with the kids, where they feel like, "Oh, they're going to look different if they're the ones who are actually doing the breakfast." But it makes a world of difference of whether or not they're going to succeed. Targeting the kids, we look at it ourselves as much as we can. We want to be supplemental to the work that the schools are doing. One of the things that we do, for instance, we target the afterschool programs like Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCAs, et cetera. We provide hot meals for their afterschool programs.

But again, the real goal there isn't so much, "Oh, the kid got the meal." That's great. I'm glad the kid's getting the meal. The real goal is, I want them to keep them in that afterschool program because they've been able to show that those YMCA, Boys and Girls Club, et cetera, afterschool programs increase graduation rates. The kids are more likely to be successful. Then you think about, "When is the kids are most likely to not have food?" And that's actually weekends and summer.

Summer is hunger season for children. Because you think about during the summer months, the family has two extra meals a day to come up with. They don't get more money, they don't have more income just because it's summer, and the rate at which kids are participating in any summer meal program, it's only about, nationally, 11% of the children who participate in free or reduced school lunch and breakfast participating in anything in the summer. So it's a big hit there. So we try and really ramp up to do more distribution there.

I look at that work, it's stop-gap, being the last threads of the safety net. It's not the best solution, though. The best solution is the family having enough money to take care of the kids. You think about summer months and how much we struggle to reach those kids in the summer food service programs that we do. It's a real challenge because during the school year, the kids are all going to school. It's easy to get them the meal because they're all there in the schools. Boom, there they are. Give them the meal. They're good.

They disperse in the summer. So we're trying to chase them down, and it was like, "Okay, can I get them at this community center, at this park, or whatever?" And we don't reach the vast majority of them. For those families who are struggling, why aren't we giving them an enhanced SNAP benefit in the summer months to help with their kids so that they can do the meals themselves? It'd be a lot cheaper than our way of doing it, and it'd be a lot more effective at reaching all of those kids. But again, so much of it is, we're not thinking of this in terms of, "What's the income of the family so that they're self-sustaining?" Rather than, "Oh, how do I piece together all these different assistance programs so that we can get them through another week?"

Jeff Madrick:

You talk a lot about the quality of food as part of the hunger security program.

Brian Greene:

Oh, big time.

Jeff Madrick:

How do you get the kids to eat this stuff? I've done a fair amount of reporting in my writing and my books about how they just won't eat good stuff. What do you do to try and coax them?

Brian Greene:

I'm going to take a step backwards just because you've touched on something that is definitely a hot spot for me. It really is a shame the way our food supply is evolved in the United States. Good nutrition is more expensive than poor nutrition. That's a double hit for low-income families. As it is, if the family's having to cut back, they’re food insecure, in most cases, they don't actually go hungry. What they do is they make nutritional compromises. "Okay, I'll do the cheaper foods. They're not as good. They may have long-term health consequences, but I'll get by." The high-processed foods, they have three things that you shouldn't get a lot of, but, boy, do we cram them in there, and that's fats, salts, and sugar. Now our brain craves that because our biological ancestors, boy, it was hard to get that. So that tastes really good, and it gives you a little burst of, "Ooh, isn't that wonderful?" A little comfort food there. You feel great about it.

That does a double whammy for a low-income families because if you're in an environment where you see like, "Oh, we're in this rich society, I'm able." You see, the families are able to do all kinds of spectacular things, and they have all this nice stuff. I can't afford that for my kids. What can I afford? A little bit of junk food there and a little bit of junk food there. The next thing you know, the kids' habit is actually having these less nutritious foods, but ones that hit our pleasure center quickly, and it makes you feel a little bit less poor for a while. That's being then becomes a real challenge on what to do. A lot of times, people think that the solution is, "We need to educate people about good nutrition, more courses." It doesn't work.

Jeff Madrick:

What do you do?

Brian Greene:

One of our favorite partnerships is a program called Brighter Bites. It started in Houston, and they're now in a number of school systems all over the country. What Brighter Bites takes advantage of is the food bank's ability to source produce. In our case, 43% of our distribution is actually fresh produce. The number one surplus food that we can access these days is fresh produce. The main reason for that is what they call number twos. These are apples that are too small. These are carrots that are misshapen. Cabbages that have the outer leaves, don't look that good. Branch abrasions on the oranges. Number twos, they're just as fresh, they're just as good. They just don't look as pretty. There's billions and billions of pounds of that. So we go and source that, and then we bring it in. "Wow, this is something we can use."

Brighter Bites then takes that produce, and they then go to the schools and they say, "Okay, look, you agreed to do two eight-week programs a year where you're going to do this called the CATCH curriculum." It's this nutrition education curriculum. "We're going to come in and we're going to do demos, and we're going to provide recipes. And then the food bank is going to provide this 30-day variety box every week." So it's like an immersion. They do it for whole classes, or in some cases, the whole school at once, and they do it for two eight-week periods. And the whole goal is, basically, you're just flooded, and everybody around you is too. And everybody's doing this. You're getting the recipes, you're getting demos, the school's teaching the curriculum, and you're getting all this food. The goal is to flip those lower-income households into being heavy produce consumers, and they have awesome numbers for that.

They generally have about a 90% utilization rate during the year. In other words, 90% of the families are actually using all the produce. Not too surprising. I'm giving them free produce. The key, though, is that at the end of the program, for the families who actually fully utilized the produce, it's something in the neighborhood, 70% maintain that consumption rate after it's over, so you've actually turned this into a habit. This is the kind of partnerships that I was talking about where, instead of, I used to think, "I'm just trying to get the food out to these families." I was like, "How do I think of this as a resource to try and impact the greatest amount of change?" And it isn't just on, "Oh, okay, they can get by financially." But it's like, "Ah, what can we change people's health?" And the answer is, "Yes, we can. We've just got to be smart about it."

Jeff Madrick:

Interesting. Who are some of the partners?

Brian Greene:

Another direction that we're heavily in is working with health clinics and other healthcare providers. Eighty percent % of our health outcomes is life, what's going on in our lives outside of the doctor's office. This is something where we, again, can have a lot of impact. As I said, 40% of our distribution plus is produce. I think we're going to see a day where 70% of our distribution is going to be produce as we do more. This is a resource that is highly relevant to healthcare providers as they're trying to get their patients to change their wellness behaviors.

What we have is we look at, "Okay, here's a resource. And here's also an incentive." Where we say, "Look, I'll give you this fresh produce. We'll do variety boxes. We'll do different distributions each week so long as you're doing that wellness program." I'm like, "I want to keep you in that program, and I want to provide you a resource." And this is something that our local clinic providers, they're very excited about this. Now, there's a number of Feeding America food banks around the country that are doing these kinds of partnerships. And we're just picking on the same federally qualified healthcare clinics and hospital systems, as everybody knows.

Carol Jenkins:

You're doing all of this work. It is so admirable, and you say it is not the solution. You're not ending hunger. That, at the core of it, is poverty. What are you telling the government, the policymakers, the nonprofits you're working with, the companies? What are you saying about ending poverty?

Brian Greene:

Thank you. The first thing I want to point out, the pandemic has been a real learning experience, and there's all kinds of lessons to be learned from it. But one of them is, you look at what was happening in the economy during this whole period. Now, of course, when the pandemic first started, our lines shot up like no hurricane ever did, where suddenly all of these people are unemployed. Now, this is where, boom, lesson one, you look at how few resources the majority of hourly workers have. Because as soon as that income was stopped, they were desperate the next day. Totally living paycheck to paycheck. The United Way tells us that only about 40% of American households... No, 40% of America houses don't have $400 saved up that they can call upon in an emergency. No wiggle room. No cushion. Boy, we saw that in the pandemic. Just crazy long lines. Wow. Just like, no cushion. This is what life is like.

When the businesses started opening up and they're trying to get people to come back. Wow, there was a lot more reluctance, and older people were saying, "You know what? I'm not working out. I'm not going to come back." Or, "You're going to have to pay more." And you know what? When those wages started really going up, for the first time in four decades where wages at the bottom actually saw a significant increase, they've been just stagnant for decades, we saw it. It really had a significant impact on shortening those lines. Because, again, two-thirds of food-insecure households are working households. People working, they're not making enough money. For the first time, we were seeing a turn in that. And that was great.

The other thing, Child Tax Credit. When those hit, we saw a big drop in the lines immediately. When that stopped, guess what happened? Lines went right back up. It's time. That's why people say, "Oh, you need to be asking for food assistance." What works in the Child Tax Credit was the perfect one because, at most, well targeting. You want to talk about, as we were doing the stimulus at the early stages of the pandemic, I get it, the government had to do something and had to do stuff that they could do quickly and universally, et cetera. Not very targeted at all. So a lot of that money did not have the impact that we were shooting for. But I tell you that the things that were targeted to the low-income families, especially families with kids, that had the most impact.

We made our push to try and support that. So there was the SNAP enhancement and the Child Tax Credit, the two things the government said that had the biggest impact that we could see on the low-income households. Oh man, as the stimulus checks had much more universal. For so many of the households, good for you. If you got the money, you didn't need it. The households that really need it, you could really tell with those two changes.

Carol Jenkins:

Brian, you gave us the perfect closure, bringing up the Child Tax Credit, since we've been working on that ourselves. We thank you so much. We hope we'll have you back again to talk about all of the great work that you're doing. And we hope that we will be interviewing people of just about pure jobs, because I think that's where you're pointing. I know that some people not only have one but two or three low hourly wage jobs trying to support their families.

Brian Greene:

It is way more common than people think.

Carol Jenkins:

Right.

Brian Greene:

Because so much of employment is piecing together sub-40-hour jobs.

Carol Jenkins:

Right.

Brian Greene:

It really is.

Carol Jenkins:

Exactly. Thank you so much.

Brian Greene:

Thank you, Carol and Jeffrey. It was a pleasure to talk to you.

Jeff Madrick:

History will judge a nation's decency in various ways. One of them will surely be the wellbeing 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.

In 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:

We want to thank Brian Greene and Congresswoman DeLauro, the veterans among those who fight against child poverty, for spending time with us and for their dedication to ending child poverty. If you go to our website, www.theinvisibleamericans.com, you'll find guest bios and links as well as full transcripts and show notes of the conversations. We're adding research materials and articles on ending child poverty as we develop the site and would love to hear your thoughts. That's www.theinvisibleamericans.com. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you next time.

The Invisible Americans theme by Bridget St. John

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