In December 2021, New York joined a small handful of states that have written a child poverty target into law. The Child Poverty Reduction Act (CPRA) committed the state, in statute, to cutting its child poverty rate by 50%, with a deadline of 2031 and a 17-member advisory council charged with devising a strategy and reporting publicly on whether the state was making progress.
This year marks the halfway point on that clock. New York has done more than most states have even attempted, and it is still not on pace.
About 18% of New York children live in poverty, according to KIDS COUNT data that places the state 30th nationally, a ranking that should embarrass a state of New York’s wealth. More than half of those children are Black and Latino, and rates run far higher in rural upstate counties such as Oswego and Cattaraugus, and in cities like Syracuse, where more than 40% of children are poor.
The Urban Institute, which does the modeling for the state’s Child Poverty Reduction Advisory Council (CPRAC), estimates that all of the measures New York has enacted so far add up to roughly a 17.9% reduction in child poverty. That number is about one-third of what the law requires, with five years left to do the other two-thirds, and it was calculated before Congress began pulling support out from under the same families with H.R. 1.
CPRAC’s original modeling assumed a federal safety net that no longer exists in the same form. Since H.R. 1 passed, at least 1.5 million children nationally have lost food assistance benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the law’s Medicaid cuts are only beginning to reach children. Every dollar Washington withdraws raises the bar New York has to clear to hit a target it set when the federal floor was higher.
The CPRAC is co-chaired by the commissioner of the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance and includes state agency heads, anti-poverty organizations, child advocates, and community members from New York City and upstate New York to recommend the policies that reduce child poverty. At the council’s August public hearing in Albany, the executive director of a Schenectady County food access nonprofit described what poverty looks like at ground level: the same families returning again and again because the gap between what they earn and what they need has not closed. Food pantries, he told the council, are not a substitute for a public safety net, they are what fills the holes in one.
What New York State is doing to meet the target
In December 2024, CPRAC released its recommendations: a package of state-level policies that the Urban Institute modeled as sufficient to cut child poverty in half, at a projected cost of roughly $9 billion. The four pillars:
- Strengthen the child tax credit by raising the Empire State Child Credit to $1,500 per child per year for children ages 0-18, extend full eligibility to the lowest-income families, and index the credit to inflation so it does not weaken over time.
- Create a state housing voucher program modeled on federal Section 8, so that rental assistance is not rationed by a waiting list.
- Raise cash assistance. New York’s public assistance basic allowance has gone more than a decade without an inflation adjustment, the council recommended doubling it.
- Build a state-funded food benefit that reaches families that federal nutrition programs exclude, including non-citizen New Yorkers.
Albany has since enacted pieces of this agenda: an expanded child tax credit, a birth allowance for some public assistance recipients, and a state-funded housing voucher program. Those measures led to the initial reduction of child poverty by nearly 18%. The unfinished portion of the package is where the rest of the reduction lies.
Speakers at CPRAC’s hearings in Rochester and Albany connected the dots that policy silos usually keep apart. Legislative Director of New York State United Teachers, Kyle Belokopitsky, described students who cannot concentrate because they do not know where they will sleep, and who “start miles behind their peers.” Attorneys explained how a lack of child care and cash becomes a neglect finding and then a foster care placement, at far greater public cost than the assistance that would have prevented it. Poverty arrives at every agency’s door, not just one.
What needs to come next?
First Focus on Children has argued for years that child poverty in the United States is a policy choice, and the federal record proves it. The 2021 expanded Child Tax Credit helped drive child poverty to 5.1%, the lowest rate on record, and when it expired, child poverty more than doubled the rate to 12.4% the following year, the largest single-year increase in child poverty ever recorded. The Census Bureau’s newest data, released this month, put the supplemental child poverty measure at 13.4% for 2025.
New York’s law tests something different: whether a state can bind itself to a number and hold itself accountable to it. So far the answer is partial but promising. The law has produced honest measurement, a fully costed plan, and public hearings where parents and providers get to tell the state what they need. What it has not yet produced is an appropriation that matches the promise.
New York should fund CPRAC’s recommendations. The council delivered a package in December 2024, and the Urban Institute modeled it as sufficient to cut child poverty in half. CPRAC will deliver a new round of recommendations in the coming months, timed for the executive budget the governor introduces in January, and a budget that funds another increment is a budget that misses the 2031 target.
Other states that want to know whether their anti-poverty spending is working should copy New York’s structure. A statutory target, a required measurement methodology, a standing council with community members on it, and mandatory public reporting cost almost nothing to enact and make it very hard for a state to pretend it is doing more than it is.
Congress must stop making states address child poverty on their own. No state, however wealthy, can backfill federal nutrition and health cuts and cut its own child poverty rate in half at the same time. New York is about to find out how much of a national retreat one state can absorb, and every child in every other state has a stake in the answer.
New York made a promise to its children in writing, with a date attached. Congress has spent the last year making that promise harder to keep, which is a reason to fund it faster, not a reason to miss the date. Five years is enough time to keep that promise, but not enough time to keep debating it.