Spending on kids hits lowest level since previous Trump Administration

Federal spending on children has declined for the fourth straight year, according to First Focus on Children’s new budget report, dropping to its lowest level since the previous Trump Administration.

Children’s Budget 2025, released today, finds that just 8.57% of all federal spending is used to support children. That number represents a more than 25% decline from the high of 11.98% in Fiscal Year (FY) 2021.

“Budgets are moral documents,” First Focus on Children President Bruce Lesley writes in the report’s introduction. “They reveal what our government funds and reflect what we value. Unfortunately, Children’s Budget 2025 tells a story of invisibility and abandonment.”

First Focus on Children’s annual Children’s Budget analyzes the share of federal spending devoted to children across more than 250 government programs. Findings in Children’s Budget 2025 include:

  • President Trump’s FY 2026 budget proposal would eliminate or consolidate nearly 100 programs that support children, totaling more than one-third of all discretionary programs aimed at delivering health care, food assistance, education and other services to kids.
  • Support for children internationally, including efforts to combat childhood HIV, prevent tuberculosis and malaria, protect girls and boys from sex trafficking, and provide programmatic, financial and technical expertise to prevent childhood death and suffering worldwide, receives just 0.09% — or 9 cents of every $100 —of all federal spending. With the demise of USAID, this investment will likely shrink further. The President’s proposed FY 2026 budget would reduce the share of spending on children internationally to just 0.03% — or 3 cents for every $100 — of all federal spending.
  • The nation’s disinvestment in children is accelerating. Federal investment in children has fallen nearly 40% since FY 2021 when adjusted for inflation, and the cuts passed in H.R. 1 — especially to Medicaid and SNAP, two of the five largest programs that serve kids — are expected to drive the children’s share of federal spending to new lows in the coming years.

At the event surrounding the report’s release, policymakers, academics, and other experts laid out the threats facing children and the ways to move forward on their behalf. They highlighted the importance of cash transfers to combat child poverty and of investing in critical programs such as early learning.

“Money matters a great deal,” said Dr. Shantel Meek, executive director of the Children’s Equity Project, citing research that showed measurable improvement in academic success, college attendance, future earnings, and general well-being for low-income children with access to high-quality early education. “This argument that money doesn’t matter just doesn’t hold water in the research.”

Dr. Luke Shaefer,director of Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan, pointed to the dramatic drop in child poverty that resulted from the 2021 improvements to the Child Tax Credit and to the success of Rx Kids, a prenatal and infant cash-transfer program in Michigan. “It shows what’s possible when we invest in evidence-based polices for kids,” he said. “We can make a difference.”

On the international front, Mattito Watson, senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues, outlined the life-threatening situation that eliminating USAID has created for vulnerable children in other countries and warned that it will boomerang back to the United States in the form of trade and economic impact.

“A budget’s not just a ledger,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), author of the Global Child Thrive Act. “It’s a document that reflects our priorities as a country…Behind those numbers are real children’s lives.”

Find Children’s Budget 2025 at First Focus on Children. For a hard copy, please contact Michele Kayal.