Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau released new data revealing no change in the official child poverty rate from 2020 to 2021. However, when using the supplemental poverty measure, which accounts for most government benefits, child poverty decreased by almost half. This has caused many media outlets and researchers to champion pandemic-related expansions to safety net programs, most of which were not conditioned on employment. What this narrative ignores, however, is that long-term declines in child poverty were mostly driven by increased employment among low-income families largely due to conservative-led policy changes in the 1990s — underscoring the importance of a safety net that supports work, rather than discourages it.

The long-term trend is visible in another study published last week through Child Trends using a slightly different version of the Census Bureau’s supplemental poverty measure where the threshold adjusts for inflation rather than expenditures. The Child Trends report showed a child poverty decline of 59% from 1993 to 2019 reaching an all-time low of 11.4% before pandemic-related aid.