Kids' Share: Analyzing Federal Expenditures on Children

This series of annual reports looks comprehensively at trends in federal spending and tax expenditures on children.

To advance the economic and social health of the country, the federal government directs resources to children, helping ensure the well-being of children and their development as potential and future contributors to our common welfare. Federal resources are used to promote health, safety and wellbeing, ensure basic needs are met, help protect their families from financial hardship, and provide education. These resources constitute total federal expenditures on children, which is allotted through both direct spending on programs that serve children and through tax benefits that offer their families financial assistance.

The series seeks to inform a national conversation about how best to invest the country's resources by examining federal expenditures on childrenfrom 1960 onward and projected into the future.

Listing of Current and Recent Projects

Kids' Share: An Analysis of Federal Expenditures on Children through 2008
A third annual report, looks comprehensively at trends in federal spending and tax expenditures on children. Key findings suggest that historically children have not been a budget priority. In 2008, this trend continued, as children's spending accounted for less than one-tenth of federal outlays. Absent a policy change, children's spending will continue to be squeezed in the next decade.

Data Appendix to Kids' Share An Analysis of Federal Expenditures on Children through 2008
This appendix details our data sources, the programs we include, and the methodology used to estimate the percentage of all expenditures that went to children.

Kids' Share 2008: How Children Fare in the Federal Budget
This Report tracks trends in federal spending on children from 1960 through 2018. The primary data source used is the Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2009 and past years dating back to 1960.

Data Appendix to Kids' Share 2008
This data appendix updates and expands the appendix created by Rebecca L. Clark, Rosalind Berkowitz King, Christopher Spiro, and C. Eugene Steuerle in support of "Federal Expenditures on Children: 1960-1997," Assessing the New Federalism Occasional Paper Number 45 published by the Urban Institute, 2000.

Kids' Share 2008: Key Facts
Findings from the Kids' Share 2008 report, this report looks comprehensively at trends in federal spending and tax expenditures on children. Key findings suggest that historically children have not been a budget priority. In 2007, this trend continued, as children's spending did not keep pace with GDP growth. Absent a policy change, children's spending will continue to be squeezed in the next decade.

Kids' Share 2007
This study reports on trends in federal spending on children from 1960 to 2017, looking across over 100 major federal programs, including tax credits and exemptions. Children's spending increasingly shifted from broad-based programs to programs targeting low-income or special needs children over the 1960 to 2006 period. Thirteen major programs enacted between 1960 and 2006, which include Medicaid, the earned income tax credit, and Food Stamps, comprised 65 percent of federal spending on children in 2006. Overall, federal children's spending increased in real terms from $53 billion in 1960 to $333 billion in 2006, or from 1.9 to 2.6 percent of GDP. Yet as a share of federal domestic spending, children's spending declined from 20.1 to 15.4 percent. Meanwhile, spending on the automatically growing, non-child portions of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, nearly quadrupled from 2.0 to 7.6 percent of GDP ($58 billion to $993 billion) over the same time period. Over the next ten years, children's programs are scheduled to decline both as a share of GDP and domestic spending, because they do not compete on a level playing field with these rapidly growing entitlement programs.