A Roundtable Discussion of the National Academy of Science Report on Cutting Child Poverty By Half

The US Congress in the omnibus appropriations bill signed into law in December 2015 directed the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) to conduct a comprehensive study of child poverty in the United States. Specifically, the study is to “provide an evidence-based, non-partisan analysis of the macroeconomic, health, and crime/social costs of child poverty, to study current efforts aimed at reducing poverty, and to propose recommendations with the goal of reducing the number of children living in poverty in the United States by half in 10 years.” This policy goal mirrors goals guiding anti-poverty initiatives that have been undertaken in other English-speaking countries in the past two decades, the most notable example of which took place in the United Kingdom beginning in 1997 (Waldfogel, 2010).

The NAS committee issued its report, A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty, on February 28, 2019. The committee has four members that are associated with the social work profession. Each member brings differing skills and experiences to the committee: These four NAS roundtable members will discuss the costs of child poverty, the effectiveness and limits of current programs, and the NAS committee's recommendations for cutting child poverty in half within 10 years.