Signs of economic recovery are beginning to show. After climbing for several years, the child poverty rate dropped between 2012 and 2013 for the first time since the start of the recession, according to the annual Kids Count Report released last week by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The report also reveals that children have yet to recoup the losses suffered during the recession. Nationally, 22 percent of children lived in families with incomes below the poverty line in 2013, up from 18 percent in 2008. Furthermore, despite recent gains, the child poverty rate among black children (39 percent) was more than double the rate for white children (14 percent) in 2013.

Similar findings are highlighted in a recent report by Eileen Patten and Jens Manuel Krogstad at Pew Research Center. The researchers analyzed Census Bureau data to contextualize child poverty by race and ethnicity and found that overall child poverty dropped 2 points (from 22 percent to 20 percent) between 2010 and 2013, while remaining flat for black children. In fact, “black children were almost four times as likely as white or Asian children to be living in poverty…, and significantly more likely than Hispanic children.” The raw numbers are even more daunting; it appears that for the first time since the Census Bureau began collecting poverty data in 1974, the number of impoverished black children may be surpassing the that of their white counterparts “despite the fact that there are more than three times as many white children as black children living in the U.S. today.” This trend fuels ongoing concerns regarding the impact of the financial crisis on the racial wealth gap for the next generation, as outlined in a June report from the Social Science Research Council.

Purple Policies: The effect of economic inequality on children was the focus of a panel discussion at the American Enterprise Institute on June 22nd in Washington, D.C., which began with Robert Putnam, who reviewed the ways in which his newest book demonstrates how growing inequality has created an environment in which the “summer camp gap” is setting the stage for greater inequality in future generations. Curiously, he did not acknowledge the long tradition of sociological research that has consistently documented the relationship between parental resources and the life chances of children (i.e. Annette Lareau, Sarah McLanahan, etc.), and yet he argued that the establishment of compulsory, free, secondary education was “the best public policy decision America ever made…because it turned out, the economic historians show, that most of American growth of the 20th century came from the decision that everybody should pay for everybody’s kids to go to secondary school.” This is why, he suggested, policies that promote early childhood education are a no brainer. He remarked, “I think there have been periods in American history when we have been very individualistic, and now is probably the most dramatic instance of that – but there have been periods in America when we’ve been very egalitarian and also very communitarian.” These communitarian periods, his data suggest, preceded “gilded ages” of prosperity, growth, and opportunity. This trend incriminates practices that prohibit access to extracurricular activities as harmful to American progress, such as “pay to play” – which requires fees for sports and extracurricular activities in public schools. As a result, he advocates for what he calls “purple policies” that level the playing field for all kids, merging the interests of “Red” and “Blue” America.

Dr. Putnam’s co-panelist, sociologist William Julius Wilson, responded by arguing that economic inequality is most closely associated with income segregation in communities, and intra-racial inequality poses the greatest threat to the goal of equality of life chances for all children. His most pressing critique of Dr. Putnam’s work, therefore, is that his “purple” initiatives do not devote sufficient attention to the issue of persistent racial disparity.

Proposed solutions blocked by Congress: One such “purple policy,” that may have a deeper impact on reducing the poverty of children of color than free access to playing football, is currently under consideration. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM AT-14-13), from the Office of Child Support Enforcement, would decrease the accumulation of arrearages and interest for incarcerated non-custodial parents, provide job training and employment services to non-custodial parents, and incorporate visitation language into child support orders. Melissa Boteach and Rebecca Vallas at the Center for American Progress recently highlighted the benefits of the proposal by pointing out that “one in eight South Carolina inmates are behind bars due to nonpayment of child support” and only 21 states count incarceration as voluntary unemployment, causing non-custodial parents to accumulate arrearages and interest that make it impossible to get current upon release. Michelle Alexander has suggested such practices perpetuate the debtors prison cycle (The New Jim Crow:154), in which arrears are accumulated under the auspices of the state with the authority to garnish up to 65 percent of the meager wages the ex-offender will earn when released. This, she argues, is evidence of a racial project that engenders recidivism and perpetuates poverty in black families.

Regardless of its merits, the proposal is being blocked by the introduction of legislation (H.R. 2688) that would prohibit congressional intervention in state welfare and child support enforcement policies due to fears that it “could potentially let delinquent parents off the hook when we should be focused on structuring these important programs to promote strong families” (Boustany R-LA). However, research continually demonstrates that increasing employment and active involvement with one’s children is the best way to hold non-custodial parents accountable and promote strong families through financial support and parental attachment. This is just one example of a “purple policy” that could move the needle toward the communitarian periods that Dr. Putnam longs for, and ensure that economic recovery is granted to all of our nation’s most vulnerable citizens equally.

Learn about the proposed changes to child support enforcement policy here.

Track legislation to block these proposed changes here.

Perry Threlfall completed her PhD in Sociology at George Mason University in May 2015. Her research focuses on the institutional and structural forces that influence inequality and mobility in single mother families. You can read her occasional blog at the Single Mother Sociologist found at smsresearch.net.