Tax Expenditures for Child Exemptions: A Poor Policy to Aid America’s Children
America's children are clearly in trouble. In every year during the 1980s, nearly 20 percent of American children were classified as poor based upon currently accepted Census Bureau definitions. This contrasts with child poverty rates of around 15-16 percent during the late 1960s and through the entire 1970s. Moreover, child poverty during the 1980s was greater than the poverty of adults and elderly Americans and substantially greater than child poverty in other industrialized nations. The recently released report by the National Commission on Children [1991], Beyond Rhetoric, tells a story that points to the deteriorating intellectual and emotional well-being of children in addition to their declining economic welfare. Schools are alleged to be teaching less and doing a worse job of instructing. High school dropout rates are rising rather than falling. And with family members working more and working harder, less time and energy are available for child-rearing or for parents to teach their children. It is therefore not surprising that drug and alcohol abuse among adolescents is up, as are adolescent delinquency and suicide rates. The conclusion that public policies designed to help America's children are not working seems inescapable. Aid to Families with