from POWER POINT (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2024)
winner, 2025 National Press Women Communications Prize
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The rate of US childhood poverty reached its lowest point in 2021 due to the pandemic child tax credit emergency relief program.1,2
LOW POINT. The SPM child poverty rate more than halved, from 12 to 5.2 percent, from 2018 to 2021. The rate of US childhood poverty reached its lowest point in 2021 due to the pandemic child tax credit emergency relief program.
'Low Point' turns sanitized data into a visual narrative about the political will to make or deny proven interventions into seemingly "unsolvable" problems. The work uses rhyme and data to highlight the steep reversal of Congressional support for a program that dramatically decreased US childhood poverty. An earlier version of this poem was first published in Writers Resist.
Source: US Census Bureau, Supplemental Poverty Measures 2009–2022
The SPM accounts for government programs like the child tax credit, food assistance, and housing subsidies — making it a more accurate measure of economic hardship than the official poverty rate. The dramatic dip in 2021 shows the direct impact of the expanded CTC.
Congress approved $1.7 trillion in 2022 discretionary spending. The expanded child tax credit that halved child poverty cost roughly $100 billion per year — about 6% of total discretionary spending. It was not renewed.
Source: NPR
The expanded CTC sent monthly payments directly to families — $300/month per child under 6, $250/month per child 6–17. For the first time, the credit was fully refundable, reaching the poorest families who previously earned too little to qualify.
Source: US Census Bureau, Household Pulse Survey, 2021
Families consistently used the credit for basic needs. Households already struggling with expenses were even more likely to spend it on food and housing — 72% of struggling households put it toward rent, mortgage, or utilities.