Babies Budget 2024 provides a comprehensive analysis of the share of spending allocated to children ages 0 – 3 across more than 150 government programs in the federal budget. This analysis tracks domestic spending on infants and toddlers, including both mandatory and discretionary funding across numerous agencies in 11 different departments.
Overall, our analysis finds that for the third straight year, the share of federal spending on children ages 0-3 declined, from just 1.98% in FY 2021 to a mere 1.52% in FY 2024.
Turning the Tide: Valuing Our Youngest
A message from the President of First Focus on Children, Bruce Lesley
Budgets reflect what political leaders value. Our federal budget makes it abundantly clear that babies and toddlers are not a priority. For the third year in a row, the share of federal spending for children ages 0-3 has declined. If that isn’t alarming enough, the share of federal spending that goes to babies and toddlers is a mere 1.52% despite overwhelming evidence that money matters and investments across all aspects of their lives – health, child care, income support, housing, nutrition, and other areas – improve children’s long‑term success. Investing early in our children leads to better health outcomes, higher educational attainment, and increased earnings as adults.1 In fact, the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) estimates the societal cost of child poverty to be as much as $1.1 trillion annually. It makes no sense to try to solve the nation’s debt by cutting children’s supports when we know the near- and long-term outcomes from healthy investment in our youngest children benefit not only them, but their families, society, and the nation’s ability to grow the economy.
Our nation’s youngest children face challenges in every aspect of their daily lives. Consider:
- The U.S. infant mortality rate in 2022, which already was much higher than in other wealthy nations, increased for the first time in two decades.
- 10% of all U.S. children (7.3 million kids) did not have enough food to keep them healthy in 2022. That is a nearly 7% increase in the number of children over the previous year. Rates of food insecurity were significantly higher for households with children that included a Black or Hispanic adult.
- Recent studies have shown that children are at the greatest risk of eviction. Children are more than 40% of the individuals that face eviction yearly. Additionally, households with children under 5 make up the largest group of households that have had evictions filed against them.
Millions of children are losing health care. More than 5 million children have lost access to Medicaid through the unwinding process. In some states, such as Utah and Texas, roughly one-third (34% and 29% respectively) of children enrolled in Medicaid have lost coverage.
Child poverty more than doubled in 2022 compared to 2021, with the rate of children living in poverty increasing from 5.2% to 12.4%. This increase represents more than 5 million children (about twice the population of Mississippi) that we allowed to backslide into poverty within a single year. Black, Hispanic, and American Indian and Alaska Native children experience poverty at a rate more than twice that of white children.
Growing needs demand more investment, not less.
That’s not to say some small progress hasn’t been made. The COVID-19 pandemic served as a catalyst for investments in our youngest children, ensuring their health and safety during a tumultuous time. FY 2021 saw an almost 54% inflation-adjusted increase in spending on babies and toddlers, but as the peak of the pandemic wound down, so did congressional spending.
Even at the peak, babies and toddlers’ share of federal spending still failed to reach 2% in FY 2021. The need to increase investment in our youngest children warrants immediate action. The downward spending trend on babies should not be tolerated. Again, the share of federal spending on infants and toddlers has dropped every year since FY 2021, meaning they are falling further behind as too many members of Congress fail to prioritize children in budget decisions.
FY 2024 saw major cuts to programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
and the Child Tax Credit (CTC). Nutrition programs such as SNAP and the Special Supplemental
Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) are crucial in alleviating food insecurity,
and the expiration of the CTC in 2022 allowed 5 million children to backslide into poverty. Yet in FY
2024, we see major cuts to SNAP and a decrease in the refundable portion of the Child Tax Credit
(CTC) driving the drop in the share of federal spending on babies to a deeply troubling 1.52%. Failure
to prioritize investments in our youngest children means we fail them and our nation’s future.
President Biden’s FY 2025 budget presents us with the opportunity to turn the tide in favor of our nation’s youngest children. The President recommends increasing total spending on babies by $36.8 billion, which would restore the share of the spending on children ages 0-3 to almost 2%, surpassing the record-high in FY 2021. President Biden also recommends significantly expanding the CTC to reach low-income children currently left behind because their parents earn too little. These game-changing improvements to the CTC would increase money available for babies by almost $28 billion dollars in FY 2025 — an inflation-adjusted increase of 630%. The President’s FY 2025 budget proposal also would make vital investments in child care, housing, paid family and medical leave, mental health, nutrition, and other areas that impact babies, toddlers, and their families.
Building a healthy, prosperous, and equitable upbringing for our babies translates directly to a healthy, prosperous, and equitable future for our country. Funding choices are just that – choices. And Congress and the Administration have the power to choose to support the well-being of children.
We can and must do better by our babies and our children.
It’s time to shift the momentum and ensure greater funding for our babies and toddlers. The nation’s youngest deserve it.