Children pick out beads to make bracelets. Kansas lawmakers have work ahead of them to make sure Kansas kids get a great start in life, writes John Wilson. (Sam Bailey/Kansas Reflector)
By John Wilson, special to the Kansas Reflector
A month ago, Kansans clearly demonstrated their desires through votes at the national and state levels. Many Kansans are hurting — inflation has driven up grocery prices, affordable homes are becoming fewer and fewer, and many of our rural communities are struggling.
These challenges destabilize low- and middle-income families and make it more difficult to achieve the American dream.
This difficulty is reflected in data we’ve recently analyzed in our 2024 Kansas KIDS COUNT Data Book. The results are jarring. Compared with the prior year, 2022 data shows child food insecurity running rampant through every Kansas county, families struggling to afford housing, and our health system not working for those most in need.
We found that temporary pandemic relief measures were largely successful at giving Kansans what they want and desperately need: financial security. In 2021, we saw measures of child poverty, food insecurity and housing affordability all improve, largely due to government programs putting wiggle room back into families’ budgets after financial burdens were exacerbated by the pandemic.
But in the first year without this relief, we see some of the most concerning numbers in Kansas that we’ve measured in the last decade. Between 2021 and 2022, 37,000 more Kansas children were food insecure and another 17,000 struggled with a high housing cost burden that takes more than one-third of a family’s income.
Numbers like these should define how we orient ourselves going into the new year. We know what’s worked, and Kansas children need our help now more than ever.
The best way to pull Kansans out of the hole the pandemic put them in is to give them a neighborly hand up, not rip support away from them.
A policy we champion is a state child tax credit, in which every Kansas parent would receive a credit for each of their children on their state tax returns. We know an idea like this works. Nationwide, it lifted nearly 2.9 million children out of poverty during the early years of the pandemic.
If Kansas lawmakers implemented a state child tax credit, we could impact upward of 700,000 kids.
While a tax credit could help every Kansas family that’s struggling, we also need targeted solutions to help Kansans who find it difficult to afford housing. For instance, if Kansas expands the Homestead Property Tax Refund Act (passed in 1970), renters could once again benefit from the program after being excluded since tax year 2013. The first full year after this change saw thousands fewer claim the credit, reflecting that renters are among those whose budgets are stretched much thinner than they were more than a decade ago.
We also want to keep our kids and their parents healthy. As we focus on the financial side of Kansas, we can’t forget the system we all rely on to get our health needs met.
Our Data Book shows that Kansas families are suffering and have been for some time. Still in 2022, nearly 10 full kindergarten classrooms won’t exist because of our stagnant infant mortality rate (5.9 per 1,000 births). One key health metric seeing little improvement is childhood uninsured rates — this means 5.2% of all kids go without health insurance. An additional 1 in 5 Kansas babies are born to mothers who did not have access to high-quality prenatal care while pregnant; this is especially important in rural Kansas counties, where residents could be having issues with transportation or sparse health care options.
Kansas lawmakers should listen to the will of the people and expand KanCare, one of the most popular policy proposals in the state. By doing so, we can close the coverage gap and alleviate the burdens on our health system and provide the relief Kansans want.
We cannot let the next legislative session go by without providing targeted relief to Kansas kids in need. The people of Kansas have spoken, and they want solutions for the problems they have faced since the beginning of the pandemic.
We need every lawmaker to go into the 2025 session with the belief that there are tangible answers to the complex issues we’re facing. That takes sharing the real-life experiences of everyday Kansans with those who have the power to be changemakers. I have faith that we can make our state one that fulfills this nation’s promise of opportunity for all, but we can’t get there without rolling up our sleeves and getting to work.
John Wilson is president of Kansas Action for Children. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
This article was republished with permission from the Kansas Reflector. The Kansas Reflector is a non-profit online news organization serving Kansas. For more information on the organization, go to its website at www.kansasreflector.com.
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