After decades of focus on elderly, Washington turns to families

While the details of President Joe Biden’s signature social-spending bill are still being haggled over, one big takeaway is clear: the $1.75 trillion package marks a dramatic shift toward boosting support for families with children after decades of government benefits being skewed toward the elderly.

The turn reflects new attention among Democrats to the lasting damage growing up in poverty does to someone’s lifelong prospects, and a growing recognition across party lines of how the financial squeeze on many workingand middle-class families often hits hardest when parents confront the costs of caring for younger children.

About one-third of the spending in the $1.75 trillion framework that Biden has agreed to with Democratic lawmakers is devoted to bolstering families through direct cash payments, subsidized child care and universal pre-kindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds.

Greater help with minding young children could encourage more parents — especially women — to take up some of the record levels of job openings.

And reducing the costs of bringing up children could address some of the longerterm economic challenges the nation faces by propping up falling birth rates.

“This effort is historic in terms of families with children — there is no question about that,” said Irwin Garfinkel, co-director of Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy.

It’s a sharp break from other major expansions in social spending. Lyndon Johnson’s 1960s Great Society programs channeled about three-quarters of new spending to the elderly, including establishing Medicare health insurance and a doubling of the real value of Social Security benefits from 1965 to 1972, which were then indexed to inflation, according to Garfinkel.

Families with children haven’t been ignored — President Bill Clinton created a $500 annual child tax credit that was later increased under George W. Bush and Donald Trump. And Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act helped with health care expenses across age groups.

Still, only 9% of federal spending in 2019 was devoted to children, while about 36% went to the elderly, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Biden’s expanded child tax credit alone would reduce child poverty by more than 40%, lifting 4.3 million children out of dire circumstances, according to an Urban Institute analysis. It also would ease the strain on families making as much as $182,000.