interfering with people's ability to post content or reuse the applications or look at the content of their choice. >> watch "the communicators" tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2. we're live this afternoon at the brookings institution. they're hosting a discussion on the potential benefits and costs of expanding the child tax credit into a universal child allowance. this should get under way in just a couple of moments. live coverage here on c-span3.

welcome to brookings. richard reeves, the gentlemen to my right -- not politically, but to my right. and i co-direct a center here called the center on children and families which we are extremely pleased to do. we're pleased to be holding this event, as well, about an old policy idea, which is often called the children's allowance, a species of guaranteed annual income with some new twists. why would we be concerned about a children's allowance, the idea of giving a guaranteed cash benefit to families. i think there are a lot of reasons but i think two are predominant. one has always been a good reason to do it and that is it costs a lot of money to raise a child. at least a quarter of a million dollars, estimates vary greatly. wealthy families spend more and so forth.

but it is a lot of money to raise children. and they are the future of society so it makes sense that we would subsidize families to try to compensate them for the money that they have to spend for children, because would the kids we wouldn't have a future. second reason more recent in origin and an issue of some debate -- maybe we'll have some today about that -- and that is that since welfare reform in '9, there has been an accumulation of especially single women but people at the bottom of the income scale who do not have any cash benefit at all. and these families are extremely poor, deep poverty has risen, and so forth. so there is a real concern that we need a way to get money to that group of families. of course these are all laid out in the papers and presumably mentioned by various of participants, both the speakers and reactants. the goal of the american people, make sure all american families have a cash income, not just low-income families, but all

families. by the way, we'll talk about this later, i'm pretty sure, but very good modeling shows that even if you finance it by ending the child tax credit and the $4,000 child exemption, that there's still virtually no losers, that everyone would still have more than they have now, especially if the benefit were set at around $250 a month. so here's our plan for the event. as soon as i get through talking, jane will come up and speak for an hour or so, maybe. and it will all be very important so take notes rapidly. jane is the -- this will take three minutes to tell you her title. compton foundation centennial professor of social work for the prevention of children's and youth problems at colombia. pretty good, huh? it is a good thing i had it written down. jane can't even say it yet without reading it. and i think it is safe to say, for those of you who follow this world, that jane is one of the biggest stars in the world of

social policy. she heads a truly amazing and spectacular group. when she's done, we'll leave and turn it over to richard in panel one and they'll talk about the context of some of the issues i discussed and some other things as well. richard will chair the panel and introduce the speakers at the appropriate time. then we are going to present two actual plans for what a child wants would actually look like and how much it might cost, and hopefully we'll even say something, reactants will, will offsetting costs of these plans. and a resident scholar from aei will chair that panel and introduce the panelists at the appropriate time. then we will conclude the event with two keynote talks, one by robert door of aei whom i'll introduce at the appropriate time, and the other one rosa dilaro who will be introduced by jared bernstein. and then we'll have opportunity for the audience to ask questions for all the panelists

and for both the speakers and reactants. and then after that last keynote speech we will adjourn and have some adult beverages and snacks for people who can santa fe around for a while. so with that, jane. >> thank you, ron. so, it's my pleasure to join ron in welcoming all of you here to. i know we both want to thank the people who supported this conference today. so that would be the three poverty centers -- wisconsin, michigan and columbia. and also the a&e ekc center. ron has been a terrific host in organizing this conference. so this comes at an opportune time. we first began talking about this event a few years ago when we realized that 2017 would be

the 50th anniversary of the first conference on a universal child allowance. now some of you may not have been here for that first conference 50 years ago, but there was such a conference. it was held at hew, and it was organized by our former colleagues at columbia school of social work, evelyn burns who was very active in the founding of social security, and al khan. so we're following up on that earlier conference. already back then in 1967, many of our peer countries had a universal child allowance. and over the ensuing 50 years, universal child allowances have become a core element of a modern safety net and one that helps substantially to reduce the risk of child poverty. countries as varied as austria, canada, denmark, finland, france, germ in i, ireland, luxen bouluxe lux

luxenbourg, norway and the uk all have child family allowances. typically paid monthly these universal child allowances provide a cash floor that helps protect children from shocksnd a fluctuations in their parents' employment or income. the level of the allowance, the amount varies by country. in germany and belgium, the benefit for two children is about $5,600 per year. in ireland, it is about $4,000. in the netherlands, it is about $2,400. in canada, following recent reforms, families may now receive up to $6,400 per child under age 6, and up to $5,400 for a school-age child age 6 to 17, depending on your family income. we know from the uk that expansions of their child allowance and their child tax credits in the late 1990s and early 2000s helped cut poverty

in half as measured on an absolute poverty line as we do in the united states. the recent canadian reforms are projected to do the same, to also cut child poverty in half. it is important to note that these allowance amounts are in addition to the universal health care and the low-cost high-quality child care and preschool that these countries provide. so they are intended to help cover the costs of other necessities for children. educational goods, like books and toys, as well as material goods like housing, food, clothing, and even diapers. so when we first started talking about today's conference a few years ago, we thought we would be introducing or maybe reintroducing the idea of a universal child allowance to u.s. policymakers, especially those who weren't around 50 years ago for that first conference. but over the past few years, actually the idea of a universal child allowance has been garnering quite a bit of interest and attention in washington and elsewhere in the u.s., and from several parts of

the political spectrum. so today we're going to be showcasing two particularly prominent proposals, but there are also others. so this seems like an ideal time to come together and talk about the case for a universal child allowance and hear about two current proposals and engage in a discussion of the feasibility in costs and benefits. so thank you all for joining us and let's go into the first session. >> thank you, jane. thank you, ron. as ron said, i am co-director of the center or children and families. i'd like to add my welcome to you will of you in the room but also those of you who are joining us on the live web stream. some people are unable to make it or watching from around the country. i just want you to know if you're watching online that you are almost as welcome as the people who's come. very nearly as welcome as the people who are physically in the room. also those who are on social media, if you're going to tweet, please use the #childallowance to draw more attention to the

event. it's probably obvious by now that i'm from the uk, which jane just mentioned. in fact with three children who were being raised in the uk had a universal child benefit for all three of those children. i was then part of the coalition government that removed that universal child benefit. they were making it not universal for high-rate taxpayers as part of an attempt to save money. shortly after that i left and came to the u.s. i'm not suggesting causality, but i am just reporting the facts. i'm going to introduce our whole panel. i have two presentations and two panelists. you're going to first hear from kathy eden, sitting two to my right, as you look. she is the bloomberg distinguished professor in the department of sociology at johns hopkins. seems to write a book roughly once a year. the last two are coming of age in the other america and $2 a day on living on almost nothing in america. she's got open proceedings on

her presentation on problems with the u.s. safety net. then we'll hear from bonnie mcloud, collegiate professor of psyche zbi at the university of michigan. one note by the way, these job titles are getting longer for everybody. bonnie's going to present on why money matters. and i should have mentioned that she's also an associate editor of american psychologist. on your far left is olivia golden, former fellow of the urban institute and served for eight years in the federal government as commissioner for children, youth and families and as assistant secretary for children and families at the u.s. department of health and human services. last on the far right of the stage, senior editor for national review, columnist at bloomberg -- that's two mentions of bloomberg for one panel. so he's definitely getting his money's worth. a visiting fellow at the

american enterprise institute and senior fellow at the national enterprise institute. without further ado, i'll hand things over to kathy eden. >> so the 20th anniversary of welfare reform has drawn renewed attention to this landmark piece of legislation passed just a little over 20 years ago. and the question that's come up over and over again is, did it succeed or fail? so, i live in baltimore and i do so so that i'm not actually inside 69 beof thewa beltway an still think straight. but i've heard this is a city of simple answers so i'm going to resist the temptation to give one. if by welfare reform we include the broad changes to the safety net we saw in the 1990s and into the 2000s, the expansion of the earned income tax credit, the child tax credit, health insurance for poor children called schip, snap, our food

stamp program expanded of course by bush 2, then i think the answer to the question of whether welfare reform succeeded or failed must be -- both. so, let's talk about the success side of the ledger. i'll want to point out that i wrote a book about this, called "it's not like i'm poor." in that book we chronicle a remarkable success of the '90s reforms, expansion of the eitc that made good on the promise that if you work, you shouldn't be poor. this is a remarkable achievement, and we managed to do it -- this is really the theme of our book -- in a way that virtually consecrated these hard-pressed working parents as citizens. so i first sort of caught wind of how profound this change had

been when real work took me to east boston. i was following around eitc recipients to see how they spent the money. ended up in east boston. i just stumbled upon this old dikenzian building, kind of encrusted with 100 years of soot, wire mesh over the windows. both brass letters and carved in to the facade of the building were the words "overseers of the public welfare." to me this was such a powerful symbol of the stigma and shame that it accompanied that program. it was almost as if you had to trade away your citizenship to get relief. so imagine my shock when i then went on bennington street and arrived at the local h&r block where of course about 70% of eitc claimants fill out the tax reforms and actually collect their tax.

and standing there with my colleagues wearing sandwich boards to get them to participate in our study, people would come out after giving h&r block $200 to file their taxes saying things like, "i've got people." or, "i feel like a real american." even, "i feel proud to be a taxpayer." now my financial advisor tells me i shouldn't be paying as many taxes as i am. so i've never really felt proud to be a taxpayer. but these testaments of citizenships were just unexpected and really remarkable in our work. and we didn't just expand the eidc. we also made it easier for children of working parents to stay on medicaid and we made it easier for them to get on s.n.a.p. i think we could argue that one of the legacies of welfare reform is the working poor are, at least in terms of money,

arguably better off than at any time in american history, as long as they work full time, full year. okay. that's enough optimism. what about the failure part? of course i liked talking about that more, but let me start by saying something about the literature. laura talked about it, just reviewed all of the literature on welfare reform over the last 20 years for the annual review. it is amazing how good it looked in the beginning. lots of researchers, including myself, were looking at welfare reform in the '90s. two things were happening that made us really optimistic. welfare rolls were falling, dependency was decreasing, and labor force attachment was increasing. now somehow after 2000, researchers lost interest in welfare reform except for a few notable exceptions. and so we failed to notice that after the late 1990s, we no

longer saw this crisscross of trends, but instead two things were going in the same direction -- welfare rolls continued to fall, and so did labor force participation. so here's what we didn't understand about welfare reform. first, it was not a stroke of a pen. instead, it was a dynamic force. now, there are two features that led to that dynamism. first, we ended the entitlement. second, we gave it to states in the form of a block grant with little oversight. now we all like to think of states as laboratories of democracy. myself included. innovation can be very good. but instead, it became -- i'm going to use a strong term here purposely -- really almost an opiate for the states, an irresistible flexible funding

stream, to use peter, the citizen's term, i call it a slush fund. because i like to call a spade a spade. but when governors wanted to give goodies away they couldn't afford, like michigan's scholarship program, there was the tannif block grant. when states found themselves needing to fill budget holes, just last year in south carolina with expenditures on welfare, there was tanf. and state's governors could also look good by getting more help, sort of piling on to this help for those noble working poor. and in the end what we've seen is a virtual collapse of the program in several states, in virtually every state of the nation it is only a shadow of its former self and we've essentially seen this rising inequality among the poor.

the second thing we didn't understand is that the '90s economy -- the late '90s economy wouldn't last forever. it remains true that today's bad jobs are just much, much worse than the bad jobs of the late 9 1990s when welfare reform was looking so good. there is now a rising literature on the fissuring of the workplace which has led to worse rning income volatility among the poor who are mostly in and out of the labor market now rather than stabling, either in or either out. so let's look at a few pictures. this is the decline in the caseload among eligibles. as you can see, it is quite dark. i want to point out, in our field work, lou schafer wrote a

book called "$2 a day, the rise of the number of americans living on virtually nothing in america." this was both an exercise in numbers and in ethnography. but as we followed actual people over many months and years in this situation, we were struck by the fact that when hard times came, in most cases it didn't even occur to people to knock at tanf's door. it was dead in the imagination of the nation's poor. what we've seen in 2014 is this diversion by states, very little expended for work related activities. and the largest single category of course for other areas, oftentimes to fill budget holes or for governors to give away goodies. so there's less to the poorest, right? this is really the story of

welfare reform. less to the poorest. more to what my colleague robert moffitt calls the shallow poor. and to the near poor. so in some we've seen reconfiguring of a safety net. and laura and i in our annual review piece argue this is really a redrawing of the line of deservedness with work as the new litmus test for citizenship. now this has led to harsh consequences among the poor. we see the rise in extreme poverty. these are figures from the cps. you know our original estimates were point in time estimates. these are from the cps. reason we use the cps is because you can correct at least somewhat for underreporting. you may recall in our original estimates we reported roughly a doubling in $2 a day poverty. here you see among all families with children an increase of about three times. now if we limit our estimates

just to single mothers, we see a large increase from 900,000 to 7 -- 90,000 to 700,000 in 2012. if you don't believe surveys, we can turn to s. 2346n.a.p. data. these households have literally zero income when they apply for s.n.a.p. or go back for recertification. now, i will say something about this chart. when we plot this against our original estimates from the survey of income and program participation, there is an eerie correspondence between in line and our estimates -- except at the end of the series. when what you see from the food stamp program is much more dire than what our estimates indicate. what could be going on there?

i shoewed that slide in an audience where they said, that's immediately got to be child homelessness. so indeed, since about 2004, states have been required, schools have been required to report on the number of students that are either homeless or unstably housed. we see that when states were kind of more or less reliable in reporting, there's been a huge income. we'll come back to this in a minute. so, does it matter? does it matter that the cash safety net has all but collapsed in many of our states? my friend and former -- i think former student but maybe didn't quite overlap, says look at all this medicaid. right? robert said, well, the poor have cell phones.

now one of the participants from 2004 has medicaid. and she has a cell phone. i hear from her almost every day. how do we think about that given the fact that she had no heat this winter? how do we think about that when we consider the fact that her lights and her water were routinely cut off? her daughter, azara, turned 6 five days before christmas. rae had no money for a cake, nor did azara get any christmas or birthday presents from her family. how do we think of these two things together? i argue that it is actually important to do that. think these are good questions to be asking. i put it to you that we cannot adjudicate these claims unless we turn to direct measures of well being like student homelessness. some others that might be important are low birth weight, out of home placement, food

security and so on. but when luke and i looked in to the data we used state by your fix effects. i had to practice that, even more than i practice my title. we found that for every 100-case decline in the tanf caseload within a state, we saw 16 more kids homeless or unstably housed. so just a little taste of that well being research. now tanf may be dead. but that's all the more reason to consider other ways to get a cash floor under our most vulnerable and least culpable citizens, our children. thank you. >> thank you. [ applause ]. >> thank you, kathy. next, bonnie is going to speak on why money matters.

>> the issue why money matters to children's development is best addressed by the voluminous research on the effects of poverty and economic stress on children's development. this research is informed by three perspectives. the first focusing on investment the second focusing on family stress and the third focusing on environmental stress. i want to try to present some major findings relevant to each of these perspectives, and i want to encompass findings from correlational research, as well as experimental research. experiment research in which families or individuals are assigned to random control -- assigned randomly to control or experimental or treatment groups is critically important in

estimating the extent to which the association between family income and child outcomes is causal, but these studies have the problem in that they often tell us very little about the processes that are involved in that relationship. whereas correlation research has the opposite limitation in that it often -- it's purposely focused on trying to understand the processes that account for the link between income and children's development, but of course the limitation of these studies is that they are susceptible to biases from unmeasured patient and family characteristics, as well as biases from -- by directional influences of children on their parents. the most vigorous correlational research, and research that i will give most weight to in my overview, uses longitudinal studies -- longitudinal designs,

statistical controls for confounding parent and family contradiction characteristics and controls for the initial level of a child outcome variable. so the investment perspective essentially argues that children from poor families lag behind their economically advantaged counterparts in terms of their cognitive development and academic achievement, in part because their parents have fewer resources to invest in them. so they are less able to purchase inputs for their children, including books and educational materials at home, high-quality child care and other experiences that are associated with cognitive development and academic achievement. economically disadvantaged parents may also have less time to invest in their children because they are more likely to be single parents, more likely to have non-standard work hours, and less flexible work schedules.

and all of these factors have the effect of reducing parent/child contact. so what do we know about -- what is the -- not experiment of longitudal research tell us about this. i'll be very brief. there are very, very robust links between family inincome, quality of the child's home environment and cognitive functioning. and there is very strong evidence that the link between income and children's cognitive function is mediated through home environment, the level of cognitive stimulation in the home. so there are many, many studies that document these links. correlational research. what's perhaps more important, and what i want to emphasize is the evidence we have from

experimental research. experimental research does point to causal effects of family income during early childhood on children's being a dem beingaca. there were many welfare and anti-poverty experiments in the united states in the 1990s, and some of those experiments were experimental earning supplement programs. and those programs, without exception, increased children's academic achievement. but again, we don't know from those studies what the mediating processes are. so these are studies that have random assignment, they have treatment and control groups, and we consistently see that those children who were in families that had earning supplements that brought the earnings of the family -- the income of the families above poverty level had subsequent increases in their academic

achievement. we also have some evidence from quasi experimental research. and essentially, studies that capitalize on the natural v variation in policy implementation suggest causal effects of income on children's school achievement. so i think here is a case where you can begin to make causal statements, even when families are not randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. so we saw increases in low-income children's achievement and educational attainment, coinciding with increases in the eitc. likewise in canada, when family income increases due to an increase in the child tax credit, low-income children's math and vocabulary scores increased. so i think -- i think it is very clear that there is a causal link between income and

children's cog if i hanitive det and their achievement outcomes. the other thing i want to emphasize, because it is relevant to the proposal that we'll be discussing today, is that there is pretty strong evidence that the timing of family economic conditions matters such that economic conditions prior -- experience prior to the age of 5 compared to economic conditions experienced after the age of 5 are strongly associated with children's completing schooling, academic outcomes, adult earnings, and adult hours -- work hours during adulthood. so economic conditions seem to be much more important for children's outcomes if when we are looking at economic conditions that existed prior to the age of 5. these stronger effects of income in early childhood are

consistent with growing evidence that the developing brain is more sensitive to environmental influences in the first few years of life, and they are very consistent with this idea that early skills provide a key foundation for later skill acquisition. so let me turn to the family stress perspective, the second perspective. this perspective essentially says family income matters because of the impact that it has on children's economic -- children's parents' mental health functioning, the impact that it has on marital and co-parenting relationships, and ultimately the impact that it has on the quality of parenting. so from this perspective, children living in families with inadequate income and unstable income are more likely to experience internalizing and

externalizing problems through these cascading processes whereby insufficient or unstable income creates economic pressure as parents struggle to pay bills. this economic pressure creates psychological distress in parents that spills over into marital and co-parenting relationships, leading to lower quality parenting, distinguished by harsh punitive inconsistent and detached parenting. that in turn creates socio-emotional difficulties for the child. i would say in general that there is stronger, more didn't support for these direct links articulated by in family stress model than there is for the entire mediational process that's hypothesized by this model. secondly, i want to emphasize that the amount of family income generally is more strongly related to children's cognitive

development and academic achievement than it is to children's socio-emotional development. we also know decreases in family income and unstable income is linked to a whole host of negative outcomes. greater psychological distress among parents, disruptions in family routines, decreases in cognitive stimulation in the home, increased school absences, et cetera. in terms of experimental research, again, referring to the experimental earning supplement programs in the u.s., those programs -- some of those programs improve children's positive behavior and reduce behavioral problems. some, but not all. in contrast to the effect that these programs have on children's academic function, all of them had positive effects on children's academic function. and in terms of the -- what we

know from -- about mediating processes, the experiment earnings complement programs, while some of them had positive effects on children's positive behavior and reduced behavior problems, they don't tell us much of anything really that -- about what mediated those effects. so there was no consistent evidence that parent and family practices in family relations mediated these effects. next, i want to move to environmental stress perspective. essentially this perspective is a broader view of stress. i mean the family stress model has been criticized for focusing just on family stress. critics say, poor children inhabit physical settings that are problematic in many ways.

they are exposed to a daunting array of stressful conditions, not just family conflict, but food and security, dangerous neighborhoods, inadequate housing, poor child care, high levels of noise, high levels of crowding. so they are exposed to these stressful conditions and stressful events, and these stressful events are often contagious. one stressor leads to another, leads to another. so the environmental stress perspective formulated by developmental psychologists and neuro scientists is seen as a corrective to the narrow focus on family stress. and this broader perspective holds that family income matters to children's health and development because it affects the level of exposure that children have to chronic psycho, social and physical stress. in terms of evidence from

non-experimental research, we see significant links between family income, stress exposure, and biological and psycho social indicators. and we are seeing more and more evidence of these links. so two of the links i want to make a comment about is stress processes that are linked to poverty include detrimental changes in the body's hormonal responses to prolonged stress and autoimmune deficiencies in the aging process. we are beginning to understand how poverty, in the words of some of our students, gets under the skin. so we now know, for example, that boys who grow up in highly disadvantaged environments that are distinguished by poverty and low maternal education have short shorter years which are the caps

on the ends of each strand of dna and they protect chromoso s chromosomes. their length represents is being accelerated aging. it is used as a biomarker to lifetime stress. we also know from this research that cumulative stress exposure is a mediator between the link between profoverty and children psycho social adjustment. we have some work from quasi experimental research. again, research that capitalizes on the natural variation in policy implementation suggests that there are some causal effects of income on infant and child physical health. so in the u.s., increases in state eitcs have been associated with improvement in birth outcomes. we see similar data coming from canada.

it is unclear whether additional income in the case of birth outcomes made a difference because it was used -- the extra money was used for nutritious food because it reduced the stress created by economic pressure. other possible reasons. so we don't have as much research on the environmental stress perspective, but i think that is where the research is moving. i want to just summarize points here. experimental and causal experimental research points to causal effects of income on children's academic achievement. links between family income and children's cognitive development and academic achievement are due, in part, to differences in the provision of cognitive stimulation in the home. within family improvements, that is the same family -- longitudinal research -- shows the same family when they have extra income, we see a

corresponding increase in the quality of the home environment. suggesting that low-income parents use "extra money" in part, to improve the quality of the home learning environment. decreases in family income are linked to various negative outcomes, as i said. okay. so i'm going to stop there a and -- >> thank you, bonnie. thank you. [ applause ] >> now we have two respondents who are going to offer some brief comments. i'll then moderate a discussion with the panel before we throw it out to you. is olivia live? >> can you hear me? >> olivia golden. >> it is an lon nhonor to be ho

wi here with this extraordinary panel. ill a he troo i'll try to make five points in my five minutes. number one, it feels to me like a particularly important moment to have a panel that's focusing on the vulnerability of children, particularly young childre children. children are the most likely to be people of color of all age groups of americans, so facing lots of other barriers and developmentally, as heard in the last presentation, young children in particular, but all children are at a particularly vulnerable point. and they are at particular risk right now in proposal from the sfrags and from t separation like the repeal of hemt health reform and the president's proposals for 2018. so important to focus on that. secondly, i would say the idea of cash or a child allowance is the important piece of a solution, but particularly at

levels like $2000 and $3,000 a child in the u.s. context, which as jane pointed out is different from any other countries, it will never be more than a piece, perhaps a modest piece, of the solution. i say a couple headlines about that. one is that we have a growing body of research about how central medicaid in particular, as well as s.n.a.n., nutrition benefits, earned income tax credit, have been to children's well being. you heard some of that in the last presentation. medicaid and the affordable care act. both because of the importance to children of their own health coverage and because of the importance of covering parents and addressing their mental health and health needs. research is showing long-run effects on child's health but also on income and school completion years later. the other reason why cash is only a piece of the solution is that many of the crucial supports that children need

developmentally, like health and like housing and child care that i'm going to talk about in a moment, can't easily be averaged out to $1 a figure. the family that has modest health care needs and is healthy, the family that has a job that coincides with school compared to the family that needs full-time income child care at $16,000 or high-impact health costs. third point is that fixing low-wage work has to be part of the solution, too. catkathy alluded to this, that extent of low-wage work has gotten worse. one of the facts that surprises people when i report it from the census poverty statistics is that about 70% of poor children live in a home awith a worker. so they are poor because of too low wages, because of too few hours or because of intermittent work or a combination. raising the minimum wage, paid family leave, paid sick days so parents don't get fired because of staying home with the child,

fair scheduling are all central to the solution. fourth, i would pull out two areas where i think we ought to concentrate particularly based on the developmental evidence and the gaps we have right now, and those are child care and early education, and housing. you saw kathy's chart about homelessness. the national statistics about homelessness show that the single most likely year to be homeless is between birth and age 1 which, when you think about the vulnerability of young children to instability is extraordinary. and so concentrating on those where we now reach about 1 in 6 eligible kids with child care, 1 in 4 with housing support, is crucial. and finally, i just want to highlight that ron made the proposal that what we should be thinking about is all american children. about one-quarter of american children today have at least one immigrant parent. and within that group, about

one-third, 5 million, live in homes with mixed status families, one or more citizen children and parents who are not. those children are at risk from a whole set of policies right now that are endangering their access, even to health and nutrition that they're completely legally entitled to. when we go to cash solutions like the child tax credit, it becomes even more important to protect those children's access. so that their parents who want to be able to pay taxes are able to pay them and have the benefits go to citizen children. otherwise, we won't achieve what we're trying to achieve in terms of the improvement of the circumstances of a very large chunk of low-income families. thanks. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you. and thank you so much, everyone, for being so efficient in your use of time. no pressure on that. >> well, thank you for having me here.

i didn't realize it was the 50th anniversary of previous conference on the same topic. i'd like ron and kathy to know that i am available on may 1st, 2067, should we need to reconvene, which i have a kind of depressing premonition that we may well have the same conversation. i wanted to make two main points. and one of them is admittedly not going to be even slightly helpful. and that is that, although we're going to hear some great proposals, and have a lot to be said for them, there is a broader context about having -- the importance of having a tight labor market that is just so vitally important and because it is sort of harder to get your arms around it sometimes, we let it slip out of our minds. but it really is crucial. over the last few decades, i

believe we've had a full employment economy, something like one-third or less of the time, and we just make much, much more rapid progress in periods when you've got you've tight labor markets. while it may not be directly on point i do think it's important -- it has implications for everything, monetary policy to immigration to -- and we've got to keep that in mind when we think about macroeconomic policy, also thinking about and i poverty policy. the other thing i've been thinking about especially since i'm a political journalist rather than a pert in the social science trend is the political context and whether there is it an opening for addressing some of these the issues. it seems to me there is a small such opening. and that is the -- the conversation that is currently taking place about child care. and particularly we've got a

president who campaigned on the idea of expanding help for people who are trying to balance work and family. i think that the proposals that the trump campaign came out with were -- were deeply flawed in the sense of you know not being thought through at all. but to look at that optimistically, that means there is an opportunity to fill in and rewrite some details in a more productive way. i think that the starting point of the conversation has essentially been it's so hard to find good nannies in manhattan and that it could be useful to broaden this conversation to include low income people where i think -- and middle income people where you've got more serious needs. and then the second thing that

you're -- that is notable about trump's proposal is that he did talk about allowing stay at home mothers to have the same benefits as -- as women who were working. and i think that that too pushes in the direction of something lake a cash benefit program that benefits all parents of children. again, i think it's a very small opening. one never knows how seriously any particular trump proposal is meant. but i think that if you're going to have any positive movement over the next couple of years what you do is try to talk about a -- a prochild welfare proposal that addresses child poverty and can be fit into the idea of satisfying the president's campaign rhetoric.

>> thank you very much. [ applause ]. >> your right collar has been pulled up. as -- we have a massive audience out there. i want to you look your best. okay. we have a little bit of time for me to interrogate or to bring some of the ideas together. i don't think it will be hard and we'll move out to the audience. thank you all for comments. i see this session as being about what's the problem? the other sessions -- we're going to try in that space as much as possible. i will note however that the moment that jared bernstein walked in the room and talked about tight laboring markets. i wish i could have that kind of effect on policy. just by walking in the room it seemed to have the magic effect. so let's start actually almost where kathy started and get the reactions of the panel to the panel. you set out the idea that the

basic tanf collapsed the block granting led to a slush fund appear and you had tanf is dead. given it's basically dead that's a great time to talk about something about the universal kmield louns or cash -- given the collapse of cash welfare now is a great time to talk about it. is that a fair summary of your view? how much was about the block granting to the states? in other words, if that hasn't been part of welfare reform from the beginning? i know many part of it were worried about that i'm looking at ron haskins. and therefore what does that mean in terms of how we think about other programs more generally i'll bet the other response as well. >> the latest figures don sent me we have 750,000 adults on the roles. if you count people just being covered by state funds i think they're about 3.8 million adults on children on the rolls. i don't mean this in a strict

numerical accepts. i mean it in the sense that welfare has died in the imaginations of the poor when they hit hard times. i want not the go-to program that nol noting that something that occurs many people hadn't heard of the program. which seems inconceivable. i think if you had kept the entitlesment you wouldn't have seen the trends because it would have had to be responsible to changes in the labor market which has stopped being after 2000. what block grants do is a, decrease in value over time. right? and b, you know if they're not monitored states often have to take tough tradeoffs. and they're an easy target. >> thank you olivia come to you. >> a couple of things. as the person who administered the tanf program 20 years ago when first passed i did a longest sai -- not long -- a short he is sai what i've learned and why for -- you can

find it on the website for the center journal as well as op-ed in usa today p i would make one other point about what else change besides tanf because even when afdc existed it didn't solve the programs mm the block grant in retrospect was a huge part of the problem because congress failed to increase it. it's gone down by 30% of value. i think it's completely appropriate to blame states, texas reaches fewer than -- more like 5% of eligibles. california is one of the states that still has a program reaches over 60%. that's about state choices. but i think it's also very important to blame the federal choice that for 20 years there was no additional investment. and for my perspective it's important to see that in proposals to block grant as they come up right now. i think that that is important. the second -- not to be fooled

because at the beginning what looked positive about tanf was that there were -- looked as if there were boat loads of money to invest in child care and work training because in fact the block grant was initially set at a higher level. block grants inherently fool you. sec thing i think it's important to highlight the other big changes over the 20 years. and i highlighted the changes in the low-wage labt market. so it's much harder for parents to -- parents are working at hugely greater rates but it's very difficult for them to support kids. the changes in who kids are, they're zproerpgs knitly children of color and therefore facing a wider array of barriers on the positive side as kathy noted many other supports for the families which contributed in important ways to well being but which have gotten stuck, so that important pieces like housing and child care have gotten stuck, and the huge

improvements under the health care legislation are as risk. >> let me just press you, if you knew if we know there wasn't be the erosion of value. you said it's almost inevitable that block grants meet the erosion. >> it is inevitable. >> the block grants it's inevitably go lower. >> yes that's how i changed my mind since 20 years ago since i've seen it. >> you wouldn't do it. any additional comments on block grants in these spaces? no? ramesh, the dangers of block grants perhaps. >> no not specifically just on the general question of sort ofway we see as the dimensions of the problem. and particularly sort of what we think of as the state of tanf and so forth. look, i mean there is -- yeah i think skon winship is on the following panel he's got a different perspective. i found his view of poverty trends spraufr when i read it. my main concern would be that we

not go from the possibility that some of these things are working better than when -- than we may think to the conclusion therefore we don't need to do anything additional. because i do think there is a lot we can still to on child poverty some of the emproposals that people are talking about, even if you take the more optimistic view. >> okay thank you. bonnie i wanted to come back to some of your comments. and link them to some of olivia's points. you were mostly in the comments you were focusing on children i think kathy was too. so the key outcomes were children. it was the test score results subsequent earnings, sort of a child focused way of looking at the case for this kind of intervention. and so i want to first of all check if that was an appropriate summary of what you talked about. then and invite you to think about the the alternative ways to spend the money. if you're interested in child outcomes and you've got a

certain amount of money to spend, then it may -- becomes an empirical question doesn't whether it's better to give cash to the family or whether for example our interested in test scores whether improved schooling or prek or parenting program or subsidized work. thinking about kathy's points about the prietd about work p. olivia's point about services, housing, health education and so on. so your talk was why money mattered. you could make an argue rgt a that the goal of policy should be to make money matter less in a sense reducing the connection to low income and other services. it may have an more powerful effect on the outcomes of the kid then transferring money dollar or for dollar sifrp because as you say it takes the $3,000 to move the test core by a fifth. i don't know whether that's a good return. you might say that you can spend

that money in a way that gets you a bigger return in terms of outcomes of the child. i wanted you to invite to respond to that. >> well i can't point to any definitive research that addresses that question. i'm one -- one point that has been made by people is that the advantage of cash over in kind benefits is that cash is fungible it -- therefore one can use it in ways that is responsive to the needs of the particular families. and so i -- you know, i think that i'm persuaded that the fungibility of cash has advantages. and there is some evidence that earning supplements and income are more effective than, let's say, one study i think was cited

in one of the papers that i read -- is more effective in improving health than medicaid for example. so i think there are -- it would be useful to have a better sense about what the research says about that. but i think on the face of it there are advantages to cash benefits over. >> so they can choose how to pend it kathy what about you. >> we found in our ethnographic work the without a flar the in kind benefits become inpunishment f. about to have a surgery about to have a ovary removed this woman has gotten back on medicaid but cannot afraid many medications and she only takes the medications that are covered. so imagine what this looks like for someone's health profile over time. if medicate isn't delivering the

bang for the buck for her it's in part because she doesn't have the cash floor. >> okay so the floor and then you can put other things on top would be your point. >> yeah, so the other finding i think about that is that there is this overuse of in kind benefits and underuse of things that will help advance various outcomes that are not being met. so you know when people have cash in kind benefits they may use those. and other needs end up not being met. >> ramesh i'll come to oval yoo. >> the diversity of family needs bob the, the function ability of money, the increased possibility of rent seeking with in kind benefits all in myomind come to a very powerful presumption in favor of kash than in kind benefits. s it an rebuttable prufrps but one that's there.

>> it doesn't split on left right lines at all at one extreme you see charles murray being in favor of it many i think it's particle whether whereas people in the center i want to do it in a way more paternalistic wage subsid tis that's for housing naes for whatever. whereas both left and right of different kinds are happier just to say here is the money then it's fungible you can choose how to use it. there's a kind -- the politics of this are not straightforward as i think. >> >> olivia yes you were talking a lot about services if it felt like you were. >> yes, i think that in the end the answer going to have to be a combination, right. children and families will not benefit if they can't get health care or they get evicted because they have a little bit of cash but it doesn't solve the problems. so to me where you start is partly about the world at that moment. right now the core health care benefit is threatened. protecting that comes next and

making it be effective. i actually feel very worried about the threats to housing, which i think it's hard for me when i think about the developmental research to think about a worse thing for a baby than being evicted. i do think that's central. if along the way there came a moment when you could get the refundable children's tax credit without facing at the same time a huge cut in public revenues from a damaging tax bill, of course i'd seize it. i think that it's about fitting the pieces together. and two other quick things, one is that many of the proposals, the way they spread dollars out that i think tradeoffs are important to talk about is initiative nas are universal or near universal are obviously spending a great deal of money on middle and higher income families. because inequality among children is so important that's a question for me. again it's not a question totally resolved. if you're asking me where to

trim back it would be are it would not be cut medicaid but give somebody a child allowance it would be to consider to folk on nearly half of children growing up below twice the poverty level we face the situation where we're not investing enough in total in the future because we haven't responded to how -- how insecure half the families with kid are. >> so you worry a little bit about the universal side of it. >> absolutely i do. >> the allowance in some ways not being the best use of resources it's not going for the people most needing it. is that a fair summariry. one more quick question to the pnl a then we open it up. i think it was you bonnie. zero to five is where a lot of the action is impact and permanentness. i wanted to invite everyone on the panel to reflect on the -- the how far up the age range such an allowance might be. where we can focus the

resources, whether there is a devil of different lourns or specific investment during the earliers. given everything i heard those are the years. maybe even usefully i don't know. bus for various reasons but the stretching it up to 16 to 18, obviously a much more expensive proposition and that would make it thinner. kathy why don't you go first. >> i'd like to go to housing. we have about a quarter of eligible families in the united states have a housing subsidy tp. most of the families were on a list for years and years and years. or you know the list opened up briefly and they won a lottery. and so young children are vulnerable not only because they're young but because the housing burden on their parents is the most likely to be high. >> ramesh any thoughts on this whether focused on the early years as opposed to all children. >> i think there is a strong case for having a larger subsidy or allowance for younger children.

but you know i'm not -- i'm not going to throw out something else. i think that we need to start by improving what we've got. >> okay. >> yeah, i certainly wouldn't propose that there not be a child allowance for children over 6. i would say that -- i think there is support for having a larger child allowance from zero to 6 or 5. partly because of income of parents -- or of children this age tends to be lower because they are younger. they have less work history, et cetera, et cetera. so taking that into account, that is the increased stress that parents with children this age are under in addition to the fact that the economic conditions for children under age 5 seem to be more important to their long-term outcomes.

for me that would suggest a child allowance that is gratd. >> like a stepped. >> yeah. >> okay. >> i just want to invite everybody on wednesday, the jorjt center for poverty and ineventual equality and university of michigan and clasp are doing a session precisely on what's the right set of solutions from cradle to kindergarten and the title of the back. i would say across the whole portfolio of solutions we need to look a lot at the unique birth to five circumstances the vulnerability of the kids and parents and the extraordinary difficulty of maintaining low wage work while caring for a baby todd letter. that doesn't have a implication in the amount of the allowance by but it's a different portfolio of strategies. >> very good open up the questions two quick comments one in the uk it was different to take a universal child benefit and means test out the most

affluent as opposed to means testing in the poor it has a political feel that's different not that it was uncontroversial i'm not saying it was right or wrong. but having something universal but saying yes at the top doesn't need it different than saying only poor people who brof it can get it. the questions well you'll well wire it this isn't necessarily an imminent legislative ef achievement. are there there are lots of more pressing concerns. i think olivia mentioned a couple in the spirit of the conversation here is that actually having kind of good and broadieds from all sides of the political spectrum is very important kind of as we go forward. i think that's the spirit of this certainly this session. and wiltzius i'll invite comments. microns would you mind bring it to this lady here. anybody else. the gentleman next good afternoon thank you very much. >> it is expensive to be poor. and i wonder if the likes of you

all perhaps feed to do more to underscore that if you live in downtown baltimore the freshest place to get milk may be a liquor story or a 7-eleven but if you live north of towns end you get to go to cost co. i want to suggest to you all that people seem to think that poor people are poor because they don't manage things right. and in fact it's arguable that it is because they're in their environment, whether rent, food, things are more expensive. and that if you're upper middle class, in upper middle class area you actually spend less on food than they do. so i feel, again, you can tell me i'm wrong, tell all the people i'm wrong. but it is expensive to be poor.

and maybe like the bread basket thing happened in the 70s with inflation. an intern goes outs on the 3 bus line in baltimore and buys wg formula, diapers, milk. i don't know what -- and then goes and buys it somewhere else and compare. thank you. >> thank you. well i'm going to tell you're right just in case everyone else says you're wrng. to extent i think we we think about income poverty we tend to focus on the income pan the resource side not on the cost side. of course if everything is free no one would be who poor. the costs and the cost of cite, telecommunications be toft of transport and so on something we don't spend enough time on one of the reasons i think it's god to spend more time on that the poverty debates you might be able to build a broader applicationle coal i guess. very reason the poor can't ache tus the markets the aren't working the space for a potential marketis about aed

solution slow l lowering the cost of key items that there therefore means you're less poor even if we haven't managed to income income. i think you're right. let's see if everyone things start with you ramesh go on ramesh. >> i think that that is absolutely -- we've been talking about the poor pay more for decades. the o- the idea of the possibility of left-right coalition. i think the cost of housing particularly some regions of the house something something we have seen more attention to from both liberal and conservatives that could be tackled but there are serious problems standing in the way of addressing the problems. >> great kathy. >> i want to amplify this point. i spent my career hanging out with folks who are poor and talking to them about the budgets. and what is amazing to me is how skilled many poor people are at economic survival. we did a study the us da looking

at 90 food stamp householding the degree of skill in managing a food stamp budgets is astonishing. that's a regular thing that happens to folks who do what i do. they're so amazing at you know budgeting for food. what i think. two psychologists have clued us into is there is a huge tax on one's cognitive band width for do that. the space taken up surviving is the detriment of other -- of one's cognitive load. and it's much harder then to focus on tasks that may lead to mobility from poverty. >> bonnie. >> i would just add that the cost of being poor is exacerbated if you're african-american. i don't know about latino. but i know the research certainly suggests that race

exacerbates that problem. >> thank you. >> because of racial segregation. >> and transport access. >> and i would just add, i also agree and i would say that another thing that exacerbates it is the disproportion knit share of poor people and of black and latino people raising kids while in low-wage jobs with the rigidity in terms of time. so it's both that things cost money and that the ability to -- to do anything, to get somewhere, to buy on the sale or whatever it is is sharply constrained by the ways in which you'll lose your job or be docked pay. >> thanks two questions actually. the first is do you have any data or explanations for why given how expensive it is to raise children why so many poor people why they have kids why they would add that stressor. the second part is rather than providing some sort of universal credit why not provide a dollar

for dollar tax credit to taxpayers who actually just provide money for programs or services outright? so that they have a little bit of control over where the money it is actually going. >> it's very quiet. the second one is. >> rather than -- essentially rather than having some sort of the subsidized program where you're then providing money to people for whatever -- woi not allow taxpayers to actually just provide funds directly and then give them some sort of credit or tax deduction. >> thank you. so we have just a couple of minutes left for the panel. so please don't feel you all have to answer both of though questions but please do if you want to then any final thoughts it's probably our last round bef before we have to close the round. . >> on the first. >> did you all here. >> on the first one there have been drauchlt reduce reductions in birthday including everybody, including young teenagers and young adults.

so there reductions in birth rate, increases in work force participation. the way i think of it is families doing everything they can do. the problem is the labor the market and the public framework isn't supporting enemy in raising kids. i would say second i'm going to leave the second question to others. i think the other thing i would say is that these kids are our future. if we didn't have them we would be an aging society like japan. so the fact that half of children are in struggling households where there is a lot of work but below twice the poverty level is a very- it would be better for us if those families were more economically secure. but it would not be better for us if we had only a highly aging welloff population, no longer in age range to have kids and fewer kids. from my perspective the kids are crucial to our future. >> all right thank you. bonnie.

>> either, both or neither or a pass? >> well i think children bring great enjoyment to parents. >> most of the time. >> most of the time. most of the time. >> that's the most controversial thing anyone has said so far. >> but parent something a very emotional experience. you -- you -- you enjoy your children. but they also drive you crazy. so. >> it's not just a financial decision in other words not doing the cost benefit at analysis. >> it's not. that's probably a good thing. >> [ inaudible question ]. >> kathy. >> i've written a book on this topic. asking people why they have children and i wrote an essay with christophergenics a couple of years ago do poor people have

the right to bear children? very much to your point. we see in our ethnic graphic works that children are a key source of meaning and identity and closely linked to all sorts of prosocial behaviors men who parent hand men who actively parent see lower rates of testosterone which is of course linked to lower prosocial behavior. what we we argue. what we argue in the essay and see in a world where if you play by the rules you still can't afford a child that is a world that is err responsible to you. and that's what's happening with our families they are playing by the rules to the best of their ability. but they tell cannot afraid to bear children we argue they have the right to do so. >> all right ramesh. >> on the second question quip which i'm going to reformulate why not tax reduction instead of

spending programs is i'm all for it. in particular i think payroll tax relief is something we ought to explore. but you know we have of course tax deduction for people who give to organizations that combat poverty. and we can -- we should think about changing some of those. i think that makes a certain amount of sense to convert that into a credit -- a flat credit that doesn't depend on income for the value of that deduction. but -- be a i think that's a very important part actually of the american safety net. but it can't be of course the entirety of it. >> we are into now we want to design sump a policy pros and cons almost as if we planned that's a perfect segue to the next panel session we are wetting the #childallowance five minute break as the next panel is set up perfect grab to drink,

restroom break. not lose kathy. running away. >> so a break between panel ts here in a couple of minutes the second panel coming up this afternoon from the brookings

institution. we'll take a look at universal child allowance programs that provide cash grants to families with children. and compare those programs and other countries to what might work or not work here in the u.s. continuing live coverage here on c-span 3.