Annie E Casey’s New Report Highlights the Impact of Safety Net Policies at a Critical Time
As fears about the government shutdown’s impact on Vermont’s social safety net continue to mount, the Annie E. Casey Foundation released a critical data snapshot last week- Measuring Access to Opportunity in the United States: A 10-Year Update. The report clearly validates that safety net programs work, and that withdrawing public investment brings serious consequences for child well-being.
According to Casey’s analysis of the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), over the past 4 years, child poverty in Vermont has risen from 7% to 9%, as federal pandemic era programs ended and costs continued to climb. While our rate may be lower than the national average of 13%, this difference shouldn’t belie the impact for Vermont kids: 9% means 10,000 children in our state are waking up each day uncertain of whether their needs will be met. Without government intervention, the data shows us that percentage could nearly double- to 16%.
10,000 children experiencing poverty is a policy choice, one that impacts all of us. Researchers estimate child poverty costs the United States up to $1 trillion annually in lost productivity, lower lifetime earnings and higher spending on health care, crime and public programs. Communities with high poverty rates bear the costs of higher spending on health care, and increased crime, while schools have fewer resources and worse outcomes than wealthier districts.
The SPM is valuable for helping us see this in that it acts as an accounting sheet, measuring up essential expenses such as housing, medical and child care; adjusting for geographic differences; and tracking the effectiveness of vital resources like tax credits, housing subsidies, and food assistance. The fact that the SPM is currently lower than our official rate tells us our safety net is working, but it’s just not keeping up, something we’ve written about previously. That means 9%, or nearly 1 in 10 children in Vermont, are not receiving adequate support to meet subsistence living standards.
We know a better way is possible because we’ve seen it, and recently. In 2021, the expanded Child Tax Credit nearly solved this crisis- just 5% of children in the U.S. lived in poverty. This, in combination with other pandemic era supports, lifted more than 15 million children out of poverty in a single year, including 4,000 in Vermont, reaching over 90% of kids in Vermont.
As the SPM demonstrates, policies and programs that stave off poverty are a lifeline for families in our state, but more is needed. While Vermont’s Child Tax Credit (CTC) provides $1,000 annually per child under 6 to families with adjusted gross incomes up to $125,000, more is needed to address the mounting impacts of retracted federal funding, tariffs, and other drivers of increased costs for families, particularly Black communities, where child poverty rose from 8% to 23%, and among Latino children from 8% to 21%.
Meanwhile, Vermont’s anti-poverty income support program, Reach Up, helped about 6,300 children monthly on average last year. But unlike some social programs including SNAP, SSI, and the Earned Income Tax Credit, Reach Up is not automatically adjusted for inflation. Current benefits are based on basic needs costs that are years out of date, and housing costs more than two decades old. Then the resulting benefit is chopped in half due to budget choices by the Governor and legislature. It simply isn’t enough.
Now, we’re in the midst of another crisis. Last Wednesday, the Department of Children and Families announced it had been directed by the federal government to pause SNAP benefits for the 63,700 Vermonters that rely on it. This is in addition to the 119 refugee and asylee households who already had some or all of their benefits stripped on October 1st, at the direction of the federal government (a cost Vermont has so far chosen not to assume). The SMP makes clear that the loss of SNAP benefits could force another 1,000 children into poverty.
The uncertainty and fear that this climate creates is already impacting families, and it’s unacceptable. That’s why Voices joined our partners at Hunger Free Vermont and other organizations around the state to call on the legislature’s emergency board to ensure benefits continue if the funding doesn’t come through. We can’t afford to send families into the winter hungry and uncertain. As our partner Anore Horton, Executive Director of Hunger Free explains,
"Ensuring people have access to SNAP will help to avert hunger and health crises for families, and economic crises for Vermont businesses and communities.“We are calling on our State government to ensure the best outcomes for all of us, and that starts with making sure people’s most basic needs are met."
The choices we make at this moment are important. We already know the answer to economic injustice- cash matters. Right now, families don’t have enough to meet their kid’s basic needs. Public policies like Reach Up and SNAP are critical mechanisms to ensure resources move equitably through our communities, helping everyone thrive. The Casey Foundation’s data only reinforces what so many organizations have long been telling us about what is happening across Vermont’s cities and towns: safety net programs work when they’re adequately funded, and families and communities suffer when they’re not.
If Vermont’s goal is to ensure that every child has the resources they need to thrive - or even the bare minimum - we need to start with an accurate assessment. The net impact of everything we do and don't provide, all the pluses and minuses that families must account for, need to be looked at together. The question is whether we’ll have the courage to make the kind of investments our kids deserve, or continue allowing fear, uncertainty, and division to drive us toward disconnection when our kids need us most.
Visit www.aecf.org to view the Annie E Casey Foundation’s report, or visit Hunger Free Vermont’s 2025 Government Shutdown page for the latest updates on 3 Squares benefits.
Quick actions you can take today:
1. Contact Governor Scott and ask him to publicly call on USDA to take every measure available to them to issue SNAP/3SquaresVT benefits in November.
Click here to call Governor Scott today. Don’t feel comfortable calling? Click here to send an email to the Governor.
2. Share this call to action on Facebook and Instagram
3. Post the language below on your local Front Porch Forum:
"Nearly 39,000 Vermont households rely on 3SquaresVT (SNAP) to buy food each month — and those benefits are now at risk because of the ongoing federal government shutdown.
USDA does have the funds and authority to keep benefits going, but they are inaccurately claiming they cannot send out SNAP benefits in November. Governor Phil Scott can make a difference by publicly calling on USDA to use their contingency funds to issue November benefits.
Please take a minute to use this easy form to call him and ask him to stand up for out neighbors, communities, families, farmers and local grocers"