ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the nation’s strategies to combat child poverty, and reform approaches for dealing with the problems of the existing transfer system during the past two decades. It presents the historical trend in policy initiatives for families with children, and offers a conceptual understanding of the proposed non-income-tested programs--child support assurance system, children’s allowance, and national health insurance. Income transfer policy for families with children has been a questionable issue, in part because of the increase in transfers during the past decades and the large proportion of the federal budget they constitute. By the early 1980s, the federal government’s interest in enforcement of private child support obligations as a method of reducing welfare expenditures had grown. Medicaid has become the most important public health care program for low-income households. The most prominent provision of the tax system for assisting families with children is the earned income tax credit.
