US Child Poverty
Critical Analysis
According the the data from the graph above, what percent of American children live in poverty?
What best explains why 1/3 of all American children live in poverty?
Claim: “If children don’t want to be poor they should do something about that!” Based on your knowledge of American politics, respond to this claim.
Why do you think the US, one of the world's richest countries, has a worse poverty rate than countries like Turkey and Poland with far fewer resources?
If you were given the option of being born in a country where 1/3 of the kids were poor or a country where 1/10 kids were poor explain which you would you chose. (Pro Tip: this offer has expired.)
President Biden’s American Rescue Plan passed in March, by July had kept 3 million children out of poverty. It dropped the child poverty rate by almost 4% with the first payment alone. The huge increase in government aid prompted by the coronavirus pandemic will cut poverty nearly in half this year from prepandemic levels and push the share of Americans in poverty to the lowest level on record, according to the most comprehensive analysis yet of a vast but temporary expansion of the safety net. The number of poor Americans is expected to fall by nearly 20 million from 2018 levels, a decline of almost 45 percent. The country has never cut poverty so much in such a short period of time, and the development is especially notable since it defies economic headwinds — the economy has nearly seven million fewer jobs than it did before the pandemic. Do you think this temporary expansion of the safety net should be made permanent?
How have poverty rates fallen in the U.S. since the American Rescue Plan (see charts below*)
Based on his writings in Letter From Birmingham Jail, what do you think Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would say about Americans and child poverty rates?
Based on the state poverty rate (see map below*), state political party affiliation (see map below*) and your knowledge of American politics, what conclusion about party identification and poverty can you draw?*
How would the following ideologies likely respond to the level of child poverty in the U.S.?
Liberalism
Conservatism
Libertarianism
Socialism
Learning Extension
Read the new report from the Children's Defense Fund about how to dramatically reduce US child poverty.
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Action Extension
Share the chart above on social media or post a copy of it on a bulletin board at school and ask people to comment on it.
Visual Extension*
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