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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Maybe you saw the op-ed in The Times yesterday by sociologist and former Bernie Sanders advisor Nikhil Goyal called America Pulled Children out of Poverty. Now It's Set to Reverse Course With a Vengeance. Here is Bernie Sanders on the topic with CNN's Jake Tapper last week.

Bernie Sanders: Jake, take a deep breath. We're talking about the head of General Motors making $29 million a year, we're talking about the rich getting richer, and yet we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth. What a disgrace.

Brian Lehrer: Nikhil Goyal was a Sanders advisor on children and education, and his New York Times op-ed is linked to a new book by him called Live to See the Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty. And just to get our priorities straight, if we can't solve child poverty in this richest country probably in the history of humanity, where are our priorities? Nikhil, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Nikhil Goyal: Thanks so much for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: To start on the news, as your op-ed does, how did we recently pull children out of poverty?

Nikhil Goyal: It is an absolute scandal, as you recount in that introduction. The Census recently put out their annual poverty report for year 2022, and they found that within just one year, the child poverty rate more than doubled, which means that more than 5 million children were plunged back into poverty. It is the single largest increase in recorded American history, and it is due to the expiration of the Child Tax Credit, and among other pandemic-related economic programs.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I think a lot of our listeners know at least a little bit about the expanded Child Tax Credit during the pandemic, and that Congress let it die. Let us in on some detail of how it worked, since you know it at that level. It wasn't just the Child Tax Credit during the pandemic that contributed to this drop in child poverty, right?

Nikhil Goyal: Sure. It's quite remarkable to think about the history over just the past couple of years, where both President Donald Trump and President Biden have enacted trillions of dollars of spending that have dramatically reduced poverty, and particularly, child poverty. You can start with the economic impact payments, the stimulus checks, the expanded unemployment insurance, and then finally, the expanded Child Tax Credit. You can also look at the variety of social programs, from the expansion of SNAP benefits, to emergency rental assistance, to expansion of Medicaid. It is just remarkable the spree of programs that have strengthened American families and children over the past couple of years.

I started at the Senate the day the American Rescue Plan was voted on through by the Senate, and that piece of legislation was historic in lifting millions of people out of poverty and economic insecurity. What we're seeing today is a rebound in poverty as those programs begin to expire or have already winded down.

Brian Lehrer: Why isn't this set of policies politically popular enough to maintain, do you think?

Nikhil Goyal: I think one of the challenges we faced with the expanded Child Tax Credit is that a lot of people didn't realize that it was a new style -- a new program, in that it wasn't just another pandemic program, and so a lot of people didn't realize that this was a separate entity apart from the stimulus payments. Then I think the other challenge was around messaging. I think Democrats didn't do a sufficient job in taking credit for one of the largest expansions of the safety net for children and families in modern American history. I wish the president and other Democrats had town halls and had prime-time speeches talking about the success of this program.

I mean, just within a couple of months from July 2021 to the end of 2021, 3 million kids were lifted out of poverty just due to the expanded Child Tax Credit. It was a remarkable piece of social policy that few people really understood and grappled with. I think the consequence of that, the expiration of that as a result of the fact that Senator Joe Manchin and 50 Senate Republicans refused to support the expansion, we are in this dire situation today.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, I want to invite several groups of you in on this conversation with Nikhil Goyal, whose new book is Live to See the Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty. We've been talking mostly on the policy level so far, and some of you may have read his New York Times op-ed yesterday. The book also follows three individual kids in Philadelphia who grew up in poverty, and tells their stories as individuals, and we'll get into at least one of them as we integrate it with the policy conversation here.

I want to invite anybody listening right now who did grow up in what you would consider poverty to call and tell a little of your story and give some of your own thinking on how to end child poverty in this country at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. This is considered a pie-in-the-sky topic in America when it really shouldn't. We should be able to end child poverty altogether, and there have been attempts. President Lyndon Johnson used to talk about that, and others have too. Now it's, "Well, let's try to reduce poverty. Oh, look, the poverty rate is down from 18% to 15%. What a success."

Let's talk about what it would take to end child poverty in this country, and would the cost to other things be too much? Also, tell us your story if you grew up in poverty, and what kinds of politics that may have led you to, and policies you would like to see enacted to end child poverty. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, text or call that number, or tweet @BrianLehrer, for our guest who is so committed to this topic, Nikhil Goyal, who was a Bernie Sanders advisor on children and education in particular, and now is author of the book Live to See the Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty.

Before we get into one of those individual stories, Nikhil, on the policy we were just discussing, people will say, "You know, those pandemic emergency policies may have been necessary, but they're unsustainable as permanent policy without running up the national debt so much. It would burden those same children of today with crushing economics as they come of age." Do you disagree?

Nikhil Goyal: I would start by citing the National Academies Study on child poverty. The National Academies found that the annual toll of child poverty ranges from $800 billion to $1.1 trillion. That is an extraordinary amount of money, and that costs all of us, whether you are poor, middle class, or wealthy. It costs us in the form of higher spending on public assistance programs, on higher crime, on higher social dislocation, on lower economic productivity. It hurts our economy and American democracy. When we make these investments on the front-end in children and families, we see extremely positive outcomes on the back end in terms of longer life expectancy, better health, better educational attainment, improved quality of life, among other things. The evidence is very clear based on decades and decades of research.

Brian Lehrer: Critics will also say the pandemic spending to the extent that the federal government did spend so much money is also one of the causes of inflation right now, which is the main economic burden that many Americans are feeling at the moment. And also, responding politically perhaps to the advantage of Republicans that happened in the congressional races in the New York suburbs last year where that plus crime helped to flip Congress. Your thoughts on that?

Nikhil Goyal: The notion around the pandemic programs increasing inflation, it's an important conversation to be had. I just want to be very clear that these pandemic programs prevented mass death and suffering. People are alive today and have families because those programs existed, so I think it's very important to at least acknowledge that situation. You know, there are a number of causes of inflation. I think economists have largely pointed to the supply shocks of the pandemic in creating inflation, and we have now seen inflation cooling down over the past year, thanks to a series of policies and the economic recovery.

When we were trying to pass Build Back Better in 2021, one of the programs in that bill was a massive investment in pre-K and childcare. Two programs that would have dramatically helped curtail inflation in this country by allowing parents, especially mothers, go into the labor force and stay in the labor force, so I think there's a number of policies that we can implement to bring down inflation even further and provide people with economic security.

Then on the crime issue, I think Democrats need to talk seriously about crime, and particularly not just about crime as a kind of metaphysical, theoretical sense, but in the sense that people deserve to live in safe communities. People deserve to walk down the street and have no fear of getting shot or mugged or assaulted. That means addressing the root causes of crime and delinquency by investing in programs and other services that address crime, particularly poverty, economic insecurity, lack of educational opportunity, and lack of summer and after-school programs for our young people.

Brian Lehrer: Now, this is a policy book, but largely, it's a personal storybook, as I mentioned before, as you follow three children and their families from Philadelphia. In the op-ed, you focus on one of the three, Emmanuel Coreano. What made you choose him?

Nikhil Goyal: In Live to See the Day, I followed three young people who grew up in the poorest neighborhood of Philadelphia, Kensington. Kensington is an astonishing place, both in terms of social and economic inequality. To paint a little bit of a picture, the life expectancy for babies born in Kensington is 71, 17 fewer years than the babies born just four miles away in Society Hill, a wealthy white neighborhood. The conditions in the neighborhood are incredible-- the levels of poverty, and incarceration, and crime, and other social ills.

I met three of these young people; Ryan, Emmanuel, and Giancarlos, when they started attending El Centro de Estudiantes, an alternative last chance high school in the neighborhood. Emmanuel, in particular, has just a very moving story. He was raised by a single disabled mother who subsided on supplemental security income, SSI, as well as temporary assistance for needy families, TANF, which yielded less than $10,000 a month. They tried to live on that, and it meant that they had to endure evictions and housing insecurity, food insecurity, hunger, deep poverty, living in very violent, unsafe neighborhoods. Emmanuel had to endure enormous instability and insecurity in his life, while later on, grappling with his sexual orientation. He eventually comes out to his mother as bisexual, and has to maneuver a cruel, cruel society, amid social depression and other issues.

In the book, I provide an intimate portrait of these young people, these lives, as well as an inter-generational account of their mothers. I thought it was very important to show how the reproduction of poverty exists from one generation to another, and how the conditions that affected Emmanuel's mother, Yvette, are ones that also deeply are affecting his life in his childhood.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Where is he at today, and do you know what policies he would support for kids who may be starting out life the way he did?

Nikhil Goyal: Emmanuel now is known as Corem, using they/them pronouns. Remarkably, Corem is a staff member at El Centro de Estudiantes. They had tried community college for a couple of semesters after graduating high school, and the burden of housing costs made it difficult for them to stay in school. Today, they're living in much greater economic security, which is really just-- I'm thrilled about their work, and their career, and their economic situation compared to what they were enduring in childhood.

In terms of policies, I talked to the kids often about policy. I'd ask them, if you had a magic wand-- if you could wave a magic wand, what policies would you implement? They talked about all the way from better funded schools, schools that had decent infrastructure. They talked about a greater level of SNAP benefits, so they didn't have to be hungry so often at the end of the month. They talked about making sure that their neighborhoods weren't afflicted by gun violence, so gun safety measures, and then other policies in terms of providing greater opportunities for higher education and life after high school. I think what they indicate is that we really need, in this country, a broad cradle-to-grave social safety net that strengthens American children and families, and provides everyone with a decent standard of living and economic security.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Terry in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Terry.

Terry: Yes, good. I would like to say basically that there should be some type of money that is given by the government for each individual who was born in this country, and also, they should have food programs. Like, if they have fast food restaurants, they should have food services and clothing services for people who are needy. And the city agency should stop wrongfully terminating parents or people stopped from their jobs, because once a person is fired, the whole family and the whole community spirals into more poverty or deeper poverty. I think there should be technical training for the new wave in technology, free training for people who are in poverty so they can have a chance to get jobs and on their feet.

As far as homelessness, you have a lot of people who have backyards and spaces that they're not using, that are just filled with junk. You can build a tiny little house in their backyard and knock off some of the mortgage rates that they're paying, or use that as some type of tax write-off, but have like-- If a person is born, they have like $10,000 or $20,000, money that they get from the government based on whatever money they may have from their job, and it's just piled on top of that.

People can survive with more resources, money, and a place where they can get free clothing, free food, not just-- Like, clothes from different designers or different companies that may come up, like the GAP and so forth, and sneakers, and shoes, so they can feel good about themselves, but also at the same time, don't look like they're poor and desperate, because desperate people will do desperate things to stay alive. I'll continue to listen.

Brian Lehrer: You've obviously thought about this a lot, Terry. You told our screener you have some personal connection that led you to think so deeply about this issue. Do you want to share any of that?

Terry: Yes. I lost my job, wrongfully terminated, and New York City does not hire you if you're fired from a New York City agency, you can't work for any other agency. So, if I was wrongfully terminated based on a disability and another agency can't pick me up, then I go into poverty, and then my children suffer. Child support is another situation where they just take so much money from the non-custodial parent or the father that he cannot survive. And the money doesn't really go to the children, it goes to the system. That's another agency that has to be re-evaluated, because it really doesn't help the kids. It hurts--

Brian Lehrer: Terry, thank you for all of that. Obviously, a lot of people would push back on that last thought about men not paying their child support, but we're going to go on to another caller. Adam in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Adam.

Adam: Hi. Hey, I love the show. Thanks so much for having me on.

Brian Lehrer: Sure. What would you like to say?

Adam: I'm calling because when we were seven, my father left. There was no card, no check, he just took off. My mom had three kids, literally lived on a dead-end street, and we needed programs like welfare, and we needed food stamps to get back on our feet. It makes me really sad that people forget that we're just human beings trying to live and do what we can. All of us kids had jobs as teens. I had two jobs at 15, and we needed those programs. I really want people to understand that not everyone using these programs is just trying to take advantage of people. I think a lot of people take advantage of the programs all over the place, including tax breaks for big corporations, but we're just human beings trying to survive. Thank you so much for talking about this subject.

Brian Lehrer: Adam, thank you. Thank you very much. Well, Adam talks about his dad leaving when he was seven. There's another new book related to child poverty getting some buzz right now, it's Melissa Kearney's new book called The Two Parent Privilege. As described by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, "It's the one privilege liberals ignore," that's the headline of his column on it. He cites stats from the book, including, "Families headed by single mothers are five times as likely to live in poverty as married-couple families. And children in single-mother homes are less likely to graduate from high school or earn a college degree. They're more likely to become single parents themselves, perpetuating the cycle." Have you read that book, or how much do you agree or disagree with its premise as one of the things that society needs to focus on if it's going to try to end child poverty?

Nikhil Goyal: I have not had a chance to read the book. I read the New York Times opinion piece based on the book, which was quite interesting. There is a thread in Kensington where many of the children who lived in poverty grew up in single-parent households. I would be interested in dwelling less on that point and more so about what types of programs and policies would keep families together and strengthen those folks. I don't know if this writer mentions this, but it would be very powerful to have a universal childcare program so that single mothers and fathers can enter the workforce and stay in the workforce without the fear of their children not having a safe place to be during the day. I'd be more interested in talking about the types of policies that would help families in whatever situation they might be in.

Brian Lehrer: I mentioned earlier-- Well, I played earlier a clip of Bernie Sanders, who you worked for when he was chair of the Senate Budget Committee as an advisor on children and education, and I wonder about other countries as models as we set up another Bernie Sanders clip here. Here again is Bernie Sanders on CNN last week.

Bernie Sanders: Of course, we have to restore that Child Tax Credit, we have to end this obscenity of how we treat our children, we have to deal with income and wealth inequality, we need healthcare. These are not radical ideas, these are ideas that exist in many countries all over the world.

Brian Lehrer: These are ideas that exist in many countries all over the world. I think we have a caller who's going to exemplify that. Sheila in Montclair, but originally from Canada. Sheila, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling.

Sheila: Hello. I wanted to tell my story. My mom came from Haiti, and after two years, she sent for us. She had seven children, and when we came to Montreal, she started receiving a government supplement. It's called L'allocation familiale, which is money that is allocated to parents for children. Within, I would say 10 years, she saved as much as she could, she bought her first house. After five years, she used the profit from the first house and bought a second house. And that house, when she passed away, we profited from the profits. I'm sorry for saying profit twice.

I'm comparing my life to my friends here in the United States who had single Haitian parents who didn't have healthcare, they didn't have that supplement, and what they went through-- sometimes they had no heat, sometimes they had no food, and for me, it was very hard to comprehend. When I tell them about my life, and I thought I wasn't doing well in Montreal as a child, and compared to them, I think I was very lucky. That support from the government, having healthcare-- If I were to go to school, I needed tickets to take the bus, the school had tickets for me. I didn't have to walk in the cold. That made such a difference in my life, and so I think the safety net from the Canadian government made a big, big difference in our lives.

Brian Lehrer: I've heard that Montreal is known for subsidized daycare that costs less than $10 a day.

Sheila: I think it's $5 now. I think it's in the past 15, 20 years that we have that system. Yes, exactly. Parents don't have to worry, and mothers have a whole year when they give birth. So when after I gave birth, I was told that I had six weeks, I freaked out and I quit my job. I said, "There's no way I could-- " Six weeks, a mom is not even healed yet. It didn't make sense to me that I had to leave my child after six months with a stranger.

Brian Lehrer: Sheila, thank you so much for that call. A one-person international comparison. Nikhil, how much do you go into international comparisons in the book?

Nikhil Goyal: The book is primarily focused on Philadelphia, but I can make a few points based on those thoughtful remarks. The programs all the way from tuition-free public college, to childcare, to paid family medical leave, to child allowances, to affordable housing, they exist in much of Western Europe, and they've existed in Western Europe for generations since the World War. There's a lot that we can learn from Western Europe and Canada and other major industrialized countries that have a much more robust safety net, but I would also point out that there are incredible efforts in our own country that are worth emulating.

New Mexico has become this beacon of social democracy over the past couple years under Governor Grisham. She has adopted tuition-free two and four-year public college for all students, regardless of income or immigration status. Free childcare for families who make up to $120,000 for a family four, and then expanding free pre-K. There's great examples in New Mexico, and Minnesota, and all over this country where we've seen laboratories of social democracy emerge, and so the solutions are very American, even as we can turn and look to foreign countries for lessons.

Brian Lehrer: Fascinating. As we run out of time, we were talking about the pandemic national policies that are getting undone, which were so successful at reducing child poverty in this country. That's kind of a short-term thing. You did just start talking about a longer-term model with respect to New Mexico, but I'm curious if you think, looking back that the LBJ War on Poverty, which might have been the most explicit attempt to end child poverty in this country, that goes all the way back to the 1960s, or any other longer-term policies that have been in effect, have worked or not worked?

Nikhil Goyal: It's a great question. There is a lot of evidence to show that the Great Society programs reduced poverty and economic insecurity all the way from Medicare, to Medicaid, to the expansion of social security benefits, to expansion of school meals. One of the challenges though is that the Great Society doesn't include a number of other important programs, and too often relied on a premise that we can simply educate people out of poverty.

I think we need a public jobs program that will provide everyone with decent public employment that is unionized and pays a living wage, and we've got to go much further in really developing and investing in public goods. That means a public option in various sectors: a public option in childcare, in housing, in healthcare, in broadband. Because it's not simply enough to subsidize the private sector, we've got to build state capacity to deliver decent goods and benefits to families and communities. There's a lot of great work happening across this country, I'll give one example in Illinois. The governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, has recently announced a major initiative to bring grocery stores into food deserts. That includes publicly-owned grocery stores where municipalities and cities and towns can invest in their own grocery stores that provide more affordable nutritious food for their residents. There's a lot that we can do on the front-end in terms of building up the public sector that will reduce poverty, but also economic insecurity at large.

Brian Lehrer: There, we will leave it with Nikhil Goyal, who will be doing a couple of live events I want to tell you about if you've been inspired by this conversation and you want to hear him in person. One is tonight at seven o'clock with New York Times columnist, Michelle Goldberg. That's at the central branch of the Brooklyn Library, the main branch in Grand Army Plaza. That's tonight, right, Nikhil?

Nikhil Goyal: Right, at 7:00 PM.

Brian Lehrer: At seven o'clock. There's one coming up next week as well. Next Thursday, October 5th at NYU's Institute for Public Knowledge. That'll be at 5:30 at NYU's Institute for Public Knowledge next Thursday, both book talks on his important new release, Live to See the Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty. Thanks so much for sharing your book with us.

Nikhil Goyal: Really appreciate it. Thank you.

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