By Marianne Dhenin for Yes! Media.
Broadcast version by Mark Richardson for Mississippi News Connection reporting for the Yes! Media-Public News Service Collaboration

As kids head back to school and the general election nears, there's a question on the minds of many families: How will the election outcome affect kids and their education?

Polling from the National Parents Union (NPU) has found that heading into the election, economic issues are top of mind for many parents of school-aged children. "Times are tough, and parents are walking an economic tightrope every single day," wrote Keri Rodrigues, co-founder and president of the NPU, about the poll results.

While the U.S. boasts one of the largest economies in the world, it leads high-income countries in the proportion of kids living in poverty at over 16%.

The good news is that these issues can be addressed through government policies. Past policies and policies pursued in different countries offer an evidence-based blueprint for doing so.

A recent example of an intervention that lifted kids out of poverty in the U.S. is the 2021 American Rescue Plan's Child Tax Credit, which provided monthly checks to families earning less than $150,000 per year with young children. The program delivered dramatic results, cutting child poverty almost in half and narrowing the racial child-poverty gap. However, Congress allowed the program to lapse after just one year, and child poverty predictably shot up again.

Canada also saw striking results when it implemented the Canada Child Benefit in 2016, providing monthly, nontaxable payments to low- and middle-income families with kids between the ages of 6 and 17. That program cut child poverty, supported families' food security, and boosted the economy. Similarly, some European countries have reduced the proportion of children at risk of poverty by as much as 16% through universal programs supporting families with children with cash assistance.

Similar programs exist in the U.S., but they are patchwork, and many are still in the testing phases. At the state and local levels, more than 150 guaranteed-income initiatives have been launched nationwide since 2017, showing positive effects on kids and families. In Jackson, Mississippi, participants in the fourth cohort of the Magnolia Mother's Trust Program, which gives $1,000 per month for 12 months to Black mothers, reported that the funds helped them purchase needed shoes and clothes for their children, allowed their kids to participate in more field trips and cultural activities than before, and improved their relationships with their children.

Beyond direct cash support, universal preschool and childcare programs in some European countries have been shown to support childhood development, especially among kids from marginalized communities. Currently, childcare is one of the biggest expenses for families of young children in the U.S., often rivaling rent. Government spending on early childcare programs can help address poverty, reduce gender disparities in the workforce, and support women who pursue careers alongside parenting.

"The research is pretty clear and universal," explains Michelle Bezark, a senior researcher at the Center for Early Learning Funding Equity at Northern Illinois University. "Early childhood programs that are well funded have immense long-term benefits for children, families, and society at large."

The bad news is that if Donald Trump is re-elected, he is not expected to pursue the interventions needed to address the dire issues facing the nation's children, such as poverty. Rather, he's likely to do the opposite, judging by the presidential playbook drawn up by the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. At least 140 of his former staffers are involved in the project, whose mandate lists protecting children as one of its main goals. Yet Project 2025 promises to reorganize or even eliminate lifelines for families, including subsidized housing, cash assistance, school meals, and Head Start programs.

"It would be a disaster," says Timothy Smeeding, the Lee Rainwater Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Public Affairs and Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and former director of the university's Institute for Research on Poverty. "Some of these programs are really important, and they would be cut by Project 2025."

If Trump were elected and Project 2025's proposals pursued, experts anticipate that children and families could face worsening impoverishment, hunger, and homelessness. Households with marginalized members, including immigrants, disabled people, and people of color, are the most at-risk under the proposals for families and kids.

Child poverty often manifests as homelessness. More than a million school-age children face homelessness each year nationwide, and tens of millions of kids live in households that teeter on the brink of eviction. Despite the urgent need to address homelessness among children, the proportion of families benefiting from Housing and Urban Development subsidized housing programs has declined in recent years as the number of families in need rises, the number of affordable housing units falls, and federal housing assistance remains underfunded.

Rather than bolstering subsidized housing programs to keep kids housed, Project 2025 proposes new restrictions on access to these programs. Proposals in Project 2025 would also bar mixed-status households from accessing federal housing subsidies, making families whose members include people with different citizenship or immigration statuses ineligible to receive support. Trump floated the idea of implementing restrictions on mixed-status households during his first term in 2019, and analysts estimated that children would make up more than half of the population to lose housing under such a rule.

Food insecurity and hunger are also manifestations of childhood poverty. Today, more than 17% of households with children are food insecure. The authors of Project 2025 propose gutting programs that help keep kids fed, including the Community Eligibility Program (CEP), Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT), and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). CEP and Summer EBT, also called Sun Bucks, support school-age kids. The former allows low-income schools and school districts to provide free meals to all students. When the school year ends and children no longer receive free or reduced-price school meals, Sun Bucks helps fill the gap.

Meanwhile, SNAP provides EBT to low-income individuals. While the proposals in Project 2025 would not eliminate SNAP, they would implement stricter work requirements and provide fewer exceptions, threatening access for many families.

Both SNAP and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, another program on Project 2025's chopping block, have existing work requirements for recipients. These requirements were already broadened last year in response to a demand by House Republicans as a condition of raising the debt ceiling. Work requirements are rooted in racist and sexist tropes, such as the so-called "welfare queen" and "con artist" that Ronald Reagan popularized in the 1980s as a way to target government assistance.

Research has shown that work requirements do not improve employment outcomes, and for parents, the requirements can mean having less time to spend with their kids.

The proposals in Project 2025 go beyond threatening the housing, financial, and food security of families and kids, and take aim at the government's Head Start programs, which offer early childhood education, health, and social services to children from birth to age 5 and their families. Bezark says this would have ripple effects across every area of childhood development.

"It would mean a lot of kids would not get the developmental support they need," says Bezark. "That means early intervention services and screening for developmental delays would not happen; kids would not get needed pediatric checkups and immunizations and dental checks, and all of the other wraparound services that Head Start provides."

Eliminating Head Start programs would hit rural areas, disabled kids, and communities of color the hardest. Latine families are more likely to live in childcare deserts and need the services of Head Start. Head Start programs include Migrant and Seasonal Head Start and American Indian and Alaska Native Head Start, which serve agricultural and tribal communities, respectively. Children in foster care and those experiencing homelessness are automatically eligible for Head Start, while disabled kids must fill at least 10% of enrollment slots. Currently, over 787,000 children nationwide participate in Head Start programs.

Rather than gut Head Start programs, the Democratic Party platform promises to expand them. In fact, since entering the presidential race, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has made childcare a tenet of her campaign. She has also promised to increase the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC), which Smeeding argues should be a central part of a new tax plan to support the nation's kids and families. The CDCTC would help working families with children offset the cost of childcare. Alongside it, Smeeding suggests increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit and reinstating a Child Tax Credit to ensure "no one falls through the cracks."

Supporting kids and families with solutions like these is popular with voters, too-Democrats and Republicans alike. When polled by the NPU, more than 80% of parents with school-age children supported reinstating the Child Tax Credit, including 84% of registered Democrats, 81% of Independents, and 75% of Republicans. Another poll from the First Five Years Fund found that 86% of voters believe improving the quality of childcare and early learning programs, and making them more affordable for families is a good investment of taxpayer money.

Bezark agrees: "Laying that foundation is crucial to long-term child outcomes and societal outcomes."


Marianne Dhenin wrote this article for Yes! Media.


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A new report commissioned by faith leaders outlines the high moral stakes at play as the Trump administration pushes to cut federal programs to pay for extending tax cuts passed in 2017.

Karen Dolan, criminalization of poverty project director at the Institute for Policy Studies and the report's co-author, said the budget resolution recently passed by the U.S. House would eviscerate Medicaid, the single largest source of health coverage in the U.S., by cutting $880 billion.

"The proposal could result in a loss of coverage for 36 million people," Dolan pointed out. "In Colorado alone, there's over a million enrollees in Medicaid."

Republicans have long argued tax cuts boost the economy and allow people to keep more of the money they earn. They also say their budget resolution does not include the word Medicaid a single time. But according to a nonpartisan watchdog group, it would be virtually impossible for the Energy and Commerce Committee to meet its $880 billion without cutting Medicaid.

Extending tax cuts would amount to less than a dollar per day in savings for the bottom half of U.S. families. But the richest one-tenth of a percent of Americans would receive more than $314,000. Corporations promised to use windfalls from tax cuts in 2017 to raise wages, but Dolan noted the bottom 90% of workers have seen no benefits at all.

"When corporations get huge windfalls, in the form of tax breaks and tax loopholes, that money does not trickle down to worker's wages or to the economy," Dolan emphasized. "All it does is enrich that corporation."

The report outlined how mass deportations will raise consumer prices and harm immigrant families, including those with U.S. citizen children. The GOP also plans to cut food assistance by $230 billion and increase work requirements. Dolan stressed the majority of people who receive assistance are already working and many who work multiple jobs still need assistance because the minimum wage is so low.

"Ninety-two percent of people who receive Medicaid work either full-time or half-time, or have disabilities, are over age 65, are taking care of children or elderly adults, or are attending school."


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By Wesley Brown for the Arkansas Delta Informer.
Broadcast version by Freda Ross for Arkansas News Service reporting for The Arkansas Delta Informer-Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation-Public News Service Collaboration.

As ALICE families in Arkansas prepare for the 2025 tax season with the anticipation of healthy refunds, a federal tax proposal that offers substantial financial relief is currently at risk for low-and middle-income wage earners.

In Washington, D.C., Congressional Republicans may soon release a budget resolution that will set the terms of the national tax debate, including the expected extension of President Trump's signature 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Cut law, including its changes to the Child Tax Credit (CTC). If Congress funds President Trump's ambitious budget bill, American taxpayers could also be on the hook for $5 trillion, several experts told the Arkansas Delta Informer.

And despite Vice President J.D. Vance's statements during the November election that he would like to see the federal CTC expanded to $5,000 per year, uncertainty still looms as Congress discusses whether to continue, alter, or end its provisions.

According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, that ongoing debate will significantly impact ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) households earning above the federal poverty level but less than what's needed to survive in the current economy.

Peter Gess, economic policy analyst at Arkansas Advocates for Families and Children (AAFC), agrees. He said that with the impact of rising inflation, ALICE households will be worse off if Congress decides not to expand or extend the 8-year-old tax policy.

"And so, if nothing happens, then that tax credit reverts to $1,000. And, you know, I did a quick look at inflation, and that's like 25% less value from where it was before the tax cuts in 2017," he said. "So, without keeping up with inflation, just being reverting to $1000 it'll be a lot less for families even than what it was before."

As noted, in his first term, the President pushed Congress to pass the $1.8 trillion Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) in 2017, which made substantial permanent cuts to corporate and business taxes. That tax policy-changing law also raised the federal child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000 and made it available to families earning up to $400,000 instead of $110,000.

When President Biden took office in 2021, he significantly expanded the child tax credit under the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. Under that law, families received a $3,000 annual benefit per child ages six to 17 and $3,600 per child under six as a monthly payment for the 2021 tax year.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the payments ranged from $250 to $300, expanding the child tax credit to nearly 35 million U.S. families. However, those payments expired in January 2022 after Congress failed to renew the Biden-era program.

Likewise, unless Congress renews or expands the program under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the federal CTC will revert to $1,000 per qualifying child in 2026. Additionally, the age limit for eligible children would decrease to 16.

ALICE families nervous about possible CTC changes

Athea Townsend of Little Rock hopes Congress will expand the tax credit closer to the $3600 maximum paid to families during the pandemic. However, she says letting it expire would be far worse for families struggling with inflation, high grocery bills, and childcare expenses.

Townsend says the expanded tax credit in 2021 helped her with expenses when she had only one child, Zen, a bright and energetic eight-year-old in the third grade. "You know, he is a growing boy, so it did help with essential things like clothes and food and help with the bills," said Townsend.

Today, however, Zen has a one-year-old brother, Zi, and the CTC has since reverted to 2017 levels of $2,000 per child annually. If Congress lets the CTC expire at the end of the year, it will impact thousands of ALICE households like hers, predicted Townsend, a marketing and graphic design professional.

"For working (single parents) and others like me, it is very much needed," she said.

In October 2014, new data from the ALICE in the Crosscurrents: An Update on Financial Hardship in Arkansas report showed that nearly 11,000 more Arkansas households like Townsend were still struggling to make ends meet in 2022 compared to the previous year.

That brings the total number of households living paycheck to paycheck across Arkansas to 562,879, representing 47% of the state's population, according to the latest update from ALICE in Arkansas, in partnership with United For ALICE.

This includes 195,972 Arkansas households in poverty and another 366,907 defined as ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed), earning above the federal poverty level but less than what's needed to survive in the current economy. ALICE households include individuals and families working low-wage jobs with little or no savings and one emergency from poverty.

However, a recent report by the U.S. Census Bureau shows that the enhanced federal child tax credit during the pandemic pulled 2.9 million children across the U.S. out of poverty. This underscores the potential positive impact of the tax credit on struggling families.

New CTC proposal part of Trump budget talks

And that President Trump has ascended to the White House a second time with Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress, one of the incoming President's key economic goals is to lock in or extend parts of the law they couldn't in 2017 due to the Senate's budget reconciliation rules.

Next year, nearly all of the individual provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) will expire unless Congress acts. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that fully extending the TCJA would cost $4.6 trillion over ten years. With interest

Gess and other federal CTC proponents hope that Congress will expand the popular tax provision and tweak the law to make the credit work for more families below the federal poverty line.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) analysis, a bipartisan and more modest expansion of the federal CTC could be a ray of hope. This proposal, developed by Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden and former House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith, aims to assist approximately 19 million children who currently receive partial credit or none due to their families' low incomes. The bill would increase the refundable tax credit to a maximum of $2,500, offering a brighter future for these families.

That bill would also make families with low or no earnings eligible for the full credit, tie benefits to the number of children in a family, adjust the credit amount annually with inflation to ensure that it does not erode over time, and provide the credit in monthly installments.

"The last thing families need is to see Washington slashing their child tax credit in half," Smith said in a Jan. 16 committee hearing, which repeatedly addressed the expiring tax break.

In a CPBB research note of Feb. 5, Kris Cox, deputy director of the progressive Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said fixing flaws in the 2017 law would deliver a more meaningful tax benefit to single parents and working-class families.

"This should mean delivering a meaningful income boost to children in families who are struggling economically, even if any extension of the 2017 tax law would, as a whole, be costly and skewed to the wealthy," said Cox.

According to Gess, suppose the Wyden Smith bill passes in its current form. In that case, ADCF estimates that 191,000 children in Arkansas, or one out of every four currently left out of the full $2,000 credit, would benefit in the first year. "The credit would especially help children in Arkansas who are Black, Indigenous and Other People of Color (BIPOC), whose parents are more likely to hold low-paying jobs, due to historical and ongoing discrimination and barriers to prosperity," he said

"So, you're getting people who make lots of money the full credit, and you're getting people that don't make very much money, who really need it, aren't getting the full credit," Gess concluded.

And despite support from the House Ways and Means Committee and the vice president, many believe that expanding or keeping the CTC from expiring will be challenging, even with bipartisan backing.

ITEP Senior Policy Analyst Joe Hughes told the Arkansas Delta Informer that upbeat statements made by Vance and others during the election season are not part of ongoing budget talks. Also, the current proposal congressional Republicans are debating to extend the Trump-era tax cuts comes with a hefty price tag of up to $5.5 trillion over the next decade, based on a Jan. 10 report by the U.S. Treasury Department,

Hughes predicts that if the new proposal keeps most of the business provisions, including the slashing of the corporate tax cuts from 39% to 21%, most benefits will flow to wealthy individuals and businesses. He said that would leave everyone else with a token tax cut and saddle the nation with a massive national debt increase.

"Last year, we found that extending the 2017 law would direct more than two-thirds of the benefits to the richest 20% of households. A family making $20,000 a year would see a modest tax cut of a hundred dollars, while a millionaire would receive tens of thousands," Hughes said in a Feb. 5 research note. "This approach is designed to offer small tax cuts to working families as political cover while delivering massive benefits to the wealthiest Americans - at the cost of a ballooning federal deficit."

New state-level CTC bill introduced to Arkansas legislature

While Congress discusses the future of the Trump-era CTC policy, state legislatures are expanding child tax credits. According to ITEP, states with fully refundable Child Tax Credits in 2024 are California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Vermont. Idaho, Oklahoma, and Utah.

Arkansas does not offer state-level CTC going into the 2025 legislation session, but Rep. Denise Garner, D-Little Rock, has filed a bill that would provide a $300 refundable income tax credit for qualifying taxpayers who provide support to certain dependents.

Under House Bill 1015, the credit would be available for an individual taxpayer with net income up to $100,000 or taxpayers filing jointly with net income up to $200,000. Married taxpayers who meet the income thresholds for the credit and file separately on the same return may each claim a $150 credit against the tax due on the return of each spouse.

The bill, originally filed in November, also requires the Department of Finance and Administration (DFA) to make an annual cost-of-living adjustment to the credit amount. A DFA fiscal impact study estimates that general revenues would decrease by $238 million in fiscal 2026 and $245 million in fiscal 2027.

The DFA study shows that in tax year 2022, 618,000 taxpayers with 793,000 dependents would qualify for the credit. Approximately 370,000 Arkansas taxpayers would realize an overall reduction in tax liability at a cost of $134 million, and some 250,000 taxpayers would receive a refundable credit totaling $83 million.

Nationally, AACF data shows that 90% of Arkansas families, or 661,000 children, received monthly payments of $250 to $300 under the expanded CTC program during the pandemic. Gess said the proposed new expansion of the federal CTC before Congress would boost the family finances of around 191,000 Arkansas children at tax time this year.

An updated version of HB 1015 was submitted to the House Tax and Revenue on Jan. 15, but no hearing for the bill is on the panel's calendar. That amendment added Little Rock lawmakers, Reps. Andrew Collins and Joy Springs, as co-sponsors of the bill.


Wesley Brown wrote this article for the Arkansas Delta Informer.


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Recent federal executive orders have left many organizations in Ohio navigating uncertainty, particularly when it comes to funding for essential services.

Food banks, which serve as a critical safety net for families in need, are feeling the strain.

Joree Novotny, executive director of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, said demand has been surging across the state as economic pressures grow, leaving local organizations struggling to keep up.

"We can do a lot with a little, but we can't do it all," Novotny pointed out. "We do rely and count on our partners in local, state and federal government to be another leg on the stool of what it takes to make sure that when people are in need and facing crisis, they can turn to us for basic help with food."

The strain comes as Gov. Mike DeWine's newly proposed state budget would reduce food bank funding by 23%, cutting it from $32 million in the last cycle to $24.5 million.

While the previous budget included a one-time $7.5 million boost, Novotny warned the reduction comes at a time when food banks are experiencing record-high demand.

Beyond government funding, food banks also face challenges in managing supply and demand. With more Ohio families turning to assistance programs, organizations are being forced to stretch resources even further.

"I just talked to someone yesterday who had a distribution in one of their local communities," Novotny noted. "They generally see 175 to 200 families come to that particular distribution for help. They had 300 families come that they were able to serve and then they had to turn another 65 away."

While organizations like the Ohio Association of Foodbanks remain committed to their mission, they are calling on policymakers to provide clarity on future funding.

Federal programs like Emergency Food Assistance Program, the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, and the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program provide about 25% of the food banks' resources, while state-funded programs like The Ohio Agricultural Clearance Program and the Ohio Food Program contribute another 20%.

Nearly half of the food distributed across Ohio's 88 counties comes from state and federal support, highlighting how crucial government funding is to hunger relief efforts.