Data Appendix to Kids' Share 2008

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Abstract

Kids' Share 2008, a second annual report, looks comprehensively at trends in federal spending and tax expenditures on children. 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.

Introduction

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: How Children Fare in the Federal Budget" 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. For most of the 100 or so major children's programs examined, expenditure data are taken from the budget for the second fiscal year after the desired year to get an "actual" expenditure amount rather than an estimate-e.g., using the FY2009 budget to get the actual expenditure for 2007-because the budget for a given year includes estimates for that year and the previous year and actual data for earlier years. We draw heavily from the Appendix to the Federal Budget, one of the annual budget volumes, for expenditure data for individual programs. In most cases, the budget provides outlays for individual programs. In cases where a single outlay figure is given for a group of programs of interest, we assumed that the relationship between outlays (the amount spent) and obligations (the amount appropriated) is the same for all programs within a group: the obligation figure for the individual program was multiplied by the total outlay figure for the group and then divided by the total obligation figure. We also had to look elsewhere when a program was not broken out as a line-item that year but was lumped in with other programs.

Alternative sources for historical data on expenditures, programmatic scope, and beneficiaries served included the "Green Book," published every few years by the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, and the Annual Statistical Supplement to the Social Security Bulletin, published by the Social Security Administration. When multipliers (used to estimate the percentage of all expenditures that went to children) were necessary, information on recipients usually came from the Green Book or the Annual Statistical Supplement to the Social Security Bulletin.

When even these sources did not provide sufficient information, we contacted the federal agencies that administered the programs in question. The Annual Statistical Supplement provides the names of contacts, as does Serving America's Youth: A Directory of HHS Programs, published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). We also used the federal yellow pages and contacts from within the Urban Institute. Expenditure and multiplier data for some programs, such as Medicaid, were provided by Urban Institute staff who are experts on these programs.

Much of the quantitative effort in this report went to estimating the portions of programs, such as food stamps, Medicaid, or Supplemental Security Income, that go just to children when individual breakouts of program expenditures on children were not available. Estimates were easiest to generate for 1980, 1985, 1990, and 1993. We were able to obtain federal budgets from 1967 on, and the Green Books usually provided information from 1970 or 1975 on. The Annual Statistical Supplement also provided historical data, usually for several decades. But many agencies did not begin to collect detailed program data on beneficiaries by age group until relatively recently. Programs have also changed names and departments over the years, which adds to the challenge of tracking them over time. Fortunately for our 1960 estimates, most of these programs did not exist until the mid-1960s.

Most programs directed at children define a child as an individual who is under age 19. Some programs include 19-year-olds who have not yet graduated from high school, but we felt that this inclusion would not significantly affect the estimates. Our analysis specifically excludes all higher education programs, even if some of these funds go to those under the age of 19. When a program included 19- to 21-year-olds, we made adjustments to eliminate them from our estimates if an age breakdown of participants was available. For a few programs (noted in the descriptions), no age breakdown was available, so these adjustments could not be made. For programs directed at all ages, we obtained at minimum a breakout of youth versus adult and were usually able to include only those under age 19. Again, exceptions are noted.

For projections of outlay and tax expenditure programs from 2008 to 2018-and sometimes for recent years, such as 2004-2006, when federal budget data were not available at the needed level of detail-we relied on the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) Budget and Economic Outlook, FY 2008-18 and updated baseline projections from its An Analysis of the President's Budgetary Proposals for Fiscal Year 2009; the FY2009 federal budget, and the Department of the Treasury's General Explanation of the Administration's FY 2009 Revenue Proposals. We also employed our own assumptions. In the program descriptions that compose the bulk of this appendix, we list sources for historic budget figures historically. Section XII explains our methodology for projecting expenditures on children in different categories of outlay and tax expenditure programs and details the particular assumptions we made, by program as necessary.

Finally, all of the web addresses cited in this document were current as of March 2008.

(End of introduction. Read the full appendix in PDF format.

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