Circles Honors International Youth Day With Child Tax Credit Push
Circles USA works with families of all shapes and sizes to build people-powered financial education, civic mobilization, and poverty alleviation systems in chapters throughout the U.S. Because we know that building community to end poverty begins with uplifting the people who feel the effects of poverty most keenly, CUSA is proud to honor International Youth Day this Monday, August 12.
In this post, we’ll look at data—both grim and encouraging—on global youth wellbeing in 2024. We’ll also spotlight Circles USA’s “multi-gen” approach to financial education, sharing ways our chapters put young members in the driver’s seat of their civic and economic futures.
Growing Youth, Shrinking Safety Nets
To say “the youth demographic is booming!” is an understatement. According to the United Nations, “there are 1.2 billion young people aged 15 to 24 years, accounting for 16 percent of the global population. By 2030… the number of youth is projected to have grown by 7 percent, to nearly 1.3 billion.” The U.N. further reports:
Half of the people on our planet are 30 or younger, and this is expected to reach 57% by the end of 2030.
Survey shows that 67% of people believe in a better future, with 15 to 17 year-olds being the most optimistic about this.
The majority of people agree that the age balance in politics is wrong. More than two thirds (69%) of people across all age groups agree that more opportunities for younger people to have a say in policy development/change would make political systems better. [Source]
By any metric, young people comprise a powerful social bloc—one that is highly aware of the economic obstacles they face; but better-equipped in terms of education, confidence, hope, and technological competency (no coincidence that 2024’s Youth Day theme is “From Clicks to Progress: Youth Digital Pathways for Sustainable Development”) than any previous generation to close the wage and service gaps.
Still, these gaps are growing along with the youth demographic. A 2023 study published in Columbia University’s Poverty and Social Policy Brief found that “From 2021 to 2022, SPM [Supplemental Poverty Measure] child poverty rates more than doubled from the historic low of 5.2% to 12.4%, resulting in 5.2 million more children living below the poverty line.”
Authors Koutavas, Yera, Collyer, et al connect this rise in child poverty from 2021 to 2022—which they name “the largest year-over-year increase in the child poverty rate on record”—to the rollback of a critical social safety net for youth experiencing poverty:
Had the 2021 expanded-Child Tax Credit still been in effect in 2022, the child poverty rate would have been 8.1%, preserving much of the historic decline in child poverty of 2021… On its own, an expanded Child Tax Credit could have kept over 5 million children from poverty and cut the 2022 SPM child poverty rate by 47%. [Source]
National Public Radio also reported recently that, prior to 2022, “child poverty hit a historic low of 5.2%. The latest figures put it at 12.4%, the same as the overall poverty rate. The surge happened as record inflation was rising and a lot of pandemic relief was running out, but Census officials and other experts say a key was the child tax credit.”
Like the Columbia University researchers, NPR cites the 2021 American Rescue Plan as a lifeline expanding social services “to include millions more low-income families.” Says Sharon Parrott, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: “[I]t was a big factor in initially reducing the poverty rate…We sometimes talk about the child tax credit as being an upside down policy. That’s because the children who need it the most get the least, while higher income children get more.”
Circles upends this unequal model by first centering, educating, and resourcing young people most in need in our communities. The results are dramatic despite dwindling social safety nets. Circles Washtenaw County youth program lead Kaite Scott describes a chapter “full of committed and engaged youth who show up ready to engage with us… The relationships that our volunteers and teachers build with our children is really special,” Scott says. “Even after being apart physically for months [during the 2020 pandemic], we still have youth and volunteers committed to growing and learning with each other and checking in with one another week after week. Our youth are creative, thoughtful, unique citizens of our community and make our Circles program deeply enriched! I’m grateful to work with them daily and look forward to the many ways in which they continue to bring joy to our world.”
As well as building social capital for youth through in-house programming, Circles expands families’ understanding of how “thoughtful, unique citizens of communities” can impact policy and shape elements of their own environments through civic engagement. Our Big View Policy Platform (authored by board member Joan Kuriansky in 2020) articulates a clear, actionable list of six key obstacles to prosperity facing working families and how CUSA chapter Big View Teams can act to address them. Unsurprisingly, most of these key issues touch, directly or indirectly, on youth and domestic stability.
“It makes sense to give Circles children the same opportunities their parents receive through Circles,” says Chief Integrity Officer Yvette Trujillo, “to reflect on their past, find healthy ways to manage their present circumstances, and set goals so they can make positive choices in the future.”
Building agency and wellbeing for young members has been a top priority for Circles this past decade. In 2015, CUSA kicked off the Children’s Curriculum Pilot in chapters across the United States and Canada. That pilot included the first three months of a newly developed “multi-gen” Children’s curriculum, which CUSA leadership introduced to the network at our 2015 National Leadership Conference in Kansas City. Circles reported at the time that “children living in low-income home environments have little or no exposure to meaningful learning materials, which translates to an achievement gap between low-income and middle class students at school… The involvement of families in the Circles model creates an ideal opportunity to compensate for these missing educational opportunities.” [Source] Children’s educators and administrators, local Circles staff, and our then-Chief Learning Officer designed this curriculum to allow easy adaptability at local chapters and sites.
Next Steps For Youth Advocates
International Youth Day encourages parents, caregivers, and all community members to examine the long-term costs of youth poverty. In a 2023 study titled “The Enduring Effects of Childhood Poverty” published by the Center for Law and Social Policy, author Indivar Dutta-Gupta writes:
Children experience poverty through hardships like hunger and inadequate nutrition, insufficient access to health care, unstable housing and homelessness, and the toxic stress experienced by their parents, whose struggle to survive without adequate supports hampers their ability to consistently care for and nurture their children. The impacts of childhood poverty are immediate and dire: impaired cognitive and emotional development, behavioral challenges, and a lack of school readiness.
“The longer children live in poverty,” Dutta-Gupta adds, “the more likely they will experience poverty as adults.” Dutta-Gupta also reports that “[c]hildhood poverty is associated with reduced educational attainment and economic prospects,” and that it “leads to worse mental and physical health in adulthood.”
In order to prevent these dangerous outcomes for children, families, and whole communities, Circles partner Bread for the World recently launched a campaign to urge “the House of Representatives’ passage of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) expansion included in the bipartisan, bicameral Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act.” [Source] In a bold statement published earlier this year, Bread implores the Senate to quickly pass the legislation. The organization reports that “[a]pproximately 16 million children will benefit from the CTC expansion, including nearly 3 million children under age 3. Once the CTC expansion is in full effect, 500,000 children will be lifted out of poverty.” To learn more, including how you can support Bread for the World in this action, visit their contact portal: Urge Your Senators to Vote Yes on Child Tax Credit Expansion.
Whether through education, advocacy, or political engagement, “[t]he mission of Circles is to partner with families to end poverty in their lives and empower them to make positive changes to end poverty in their communities,” affirms executive director Kamatara Johnson. “Research shows that investing in an impoverished child’s future is an effective strategy to break the unrelenting cycle of generational poverty. Providing specific, strategic teaching to the children at Circles not only fights poverty at a personal level, but also prevents it at a community level.”
Read more about Circles USA’s youth advocacy and programming on our blog:
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