As pandemic-era benefits unwind, Poor People's Campaign wants lawmakers to address poverty

As COVID-19 case counts dwindle, the United States has been rolling back pandemic-era benefits. But one group argues that a lack of resources for escaping poverty is more than just unjust; it’s deadly.

Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival – a revival of the 1968 movement launched by Martin Luther King Jr. – aims to highlight the dangers of poverty with a three-day congress on Capitol Hill starting Monday. Hundreds of leaders from over 30 states plan to demand elected officials address poverty in the United States, with participants highlighting a recent report that names poverty as one of the country’s leading risk factors related to death.

The event comes as pandemic-era provisions meant to help low-income families like the child tax credit and expanded Medicare coverage have reached their expiration dates.

“The wrong question keeps being asked: How much does it cost us to address poverty, rather than how much is it (poverty) costing?” said Bishop William Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign. “What we can’t do is just keep burying our loved ones, burying Americans, burying citizens, burying immigrants, who are dying of poverty needlessly.”

Why are anti-poverty measures winding down?

The federal government took action to shield Americans from slipping into poverty during the height of the pandemic. The child tax credit was expanded to grant eligible families up to $300 per month per child, and the federal government agreed to send billions of dollars in extra Medicaid funding to states to keep people on their rolls. This drove down the uninsured rate to 8%, compared to the previous low of 9% in 2016.

Congress failed to renew the expanded child tax credit at the end of 2021, with critics arguing that the program was expensive and would deter parents from working.

Child poverty rates saw a dramatic uptick between December 2021 and January 2022, with Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy reporting that nearly 4 million more children went into poverty in that time frame. Latino and Black children experienced the largest increase in poverty, at 7.1 percentage points and 5.9 percentage points, respectively.

Had the expanded child tax credit continued until 2025, experts predicted that child poverty would leave 4.3 million fewer children in poverty, according to the Urban Institute, a Washington D.C.-based think tank.

Meanwhile, states are preparing to remove millions of people from Medicaid coverage as the pandemic-era policy ends. The Biden administration last year said it anticipated 15 million people – about 17% of enrollees – will lose coverage through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

More than 5 million children are expected to lose coverage, and the Biden administration projects nearly 1 in 3 of those predicted to lose coverage will be Latino and 15% Black.

People ‘are dying from poverty in the wealthiest nation’

The Poor People’s Campaign plans to discuss a series of measures with lawmakers to help people escape poverty, ranging from child tax credits and healthcare to a higher minimum wage and voting rights.

“We connect all of it together. It’s not a separate issue,” Barber said. “We’re going to call on them to put aside the deflection, the culture wars and the partisanship and to focus on the fact that Americans are dying from poverty in the wealthiest nation.”

University of California, Riverside professor David Brady, the author of the report citing poverty as one of the leading risk factors tied to death in America, will speak at the event.

His research, which published earlier this year in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found there are about 500 deaths per day in the country related to poverty, making it tied for about as many deaths as dementia. The report proposes that poverty should be considered “a major risk factor” for death.