Children, the elderly, disabled people, and students continue to make up the vast majority of the US poor. We could easily slash poverty by increasing the generosity and reach of benefit programs for the nonworking population — but lawmakers refuse to do so.

The Census released the Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS-ASEC) earlier this month. The CPS-ASEC provides the most widely cited information about income, poverty, and health insurance in the United States.

The headline from the report is that the expiration of the one-year pandemic-era Child Tax Credit and the lack of one-off stimulus payments resulted in child poverty being much higher in 2022 than 2021. This headline is certainly true, though some of the specific numbers involved may not be totally accurate because the CPS-ASEC does a poor job of accurately estimating the uptake of tax credit benefits.

As 2021 shows, dramatically reducing the level of poverty is not a technically challenging problem. Increasing the generosity and reach of the benefit programs for nonworking population groups can get the job done quickly even in an emergency situation and even in a country with very poor administrative capacity. Poverty lingers only because lawmakers do not care to reduce it any further.

Read more with charts at The Guardian.