With federal pandemic-related spending coming to end, expenditures on children, which more than halved the national child poverty rate, are set to revert to pre-pandemic levels beginning in 2022, a report from the Urban Institute finds.

Funded by the Annie E. Casey and Peter G. Peterson foundations, the report, Kids’ Share 2022: Report on federal expenditures on children through 2021 and future projections (66 pages, PDF), provides an overview of federal expenditures on children ages 18 and younger during the COVID-19 pandemic, which reached an all-time high in 2021 totaling $10,710 per child, an increase of 40 percent from $7,600 in 2020, itself a record increase over pre-pandemic spending of $6,810 per child in 2019. The 2020-21 surge in spending reflects economic impact payments (stimulus checks), a temporary expansion of the federal child tax credit, and increased outlays for nutrition, health, child care, and education programs. In total, the federal government spent nearly $834 billion on 78 million children in 2021—an unprecedented sum that is expected to decline by more than 13 percent this year.

According to the report, the federal government’s financial response to the pandemic, combined with similar state-level efforts, significantly improved conditions for many children and their families. As measured by the Supplemental Poverty Measure—a U.S. Census Bureau formula that provides a more comprehensive assessment of economic well-being than other federal metrics—child poverty dramatically decreased from 12.6 percent in 2019 to 5.2 percent in 2021. With the ending of pandemic related spending, planned increases to primarily adult-focused entitlement programs, and statutory payments on the national debt, the report estimates that federal per-child spending will decline in real dollars by almost one-third by 2032, foreshadowing rising child poverty in the next decade.

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