Poor face hit as shutdown, childcare cliff, student loans converge
“Lower income households and Black and Latino communities will be hit hard when a confluence of U.S. economic events kick off next week, including a sharp drop in childcare funding, economists, analysts and government officials said. About 12.4%, some 41 million, of the U.S.’s 333 million people live at or below the poverty line, the Census Bureau calculates, which is set at about $29,678 for a household of two adults and two children. That rate fell to a record low in 2021 thanks to COVID-19 federal support, but has jumped as these programs expired.”