Sec. 163. National plan to reduce child poverty
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The primary goal of the Working Group is to develop a national plan— to reduce, within 10 years after the date on which funding is made available to carry out this Act— the number of children living in poverty in the United States to half of the number of such children as reported in the report of the United States Census Bureau on Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2013 (issued in September 2014); and the number of children living in extreme poverty in the United States to zero; and to reduce, within 20 years after the date on which funds are made available to carry out this Act, the number of children living in poverty in the United States to zero.
In developing the national plan under paragraph (1), the Working Group shall consider all recommendations, research papers, and reports published by the National Academy of Sciences as a result of the workshops conducted pursuant to title II. Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Working Group shall make substantial progress toward the development of the national plan. The national plan under subsection
(a)shall include recommendations for achieving the following goals: Understanding the root causes of child poverty, including persistent intergenerational poverty, taking into account social, economic, and cultural factors. Improving the accessibility of anti-poverty programs and increasing the rate of enrollment in such programs among eligible children and families by reducing the complexity and difficulty of enrolling in such programs. Eliminating disparate rates of child poverty based on race, ethnicity, gender, and age. Improving the ability of individuals living in poverty, low-income individuals, and unemployed individuals to access quality jobs that help children and their families rise above poverty. Connecting low-income children, disconnected youth, and their families to education, job training, work, and their communities. Shifting the measures and policies of Federal anti-poverty programs from the goal of helping individuals and families living in poverty to achieve freedom from deprivation toward the goal of helping such individuals and families rise above poverty and achieve long-term economic stability. In developing the national plan under subsection (a), the Working Group shall employ methods for achieving the goals described in subsections
(a)and
(b)that include— entering into an agreement with the National Academy of Sciences for a workshop series on the economic and social costs of child poverty, as described in title II; studying the effect of child poverty on the health and welfare of children, including the access of children living in poverty to health care, housing, proper nutrition, and education; measuring the effect of child poverty on the ability of individuals to achieve economic stability, including such effect on educational attainment, rates of incarceration, lifetime earnings, access to healthcare, and access to housing; updating and applying improved measures of poverty that can meaningfully account for other aspects relating to the measure of poverty, such as the Supplemental Poverty Measure used by the United States Census Bureau; and using and applying fact-based measures to evaluate the long-term effectiveness of anti-poverty programs, taking into account the long-term savings and value to the Federal Government and to State, local, and tribal governments of practices and policies designed to prevent poverty.