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Child poverty in the United States is too high. How can we reduce the share of children with low incomes, both today and in the future? One possible approach—a child allowance—has suddenly risen to the forefront of policy debate, with proposals from the Joe Biden administration, House Democrats, and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT). A child allowance would send unconditional cash benefits to nearly all families on a per-child basis.

These proposals have strengths and weaknesses, like all proposals. Yet support for child allowances has become a litmus test of whether someone cares about child poverty. Child allowances have won support from many camps in the conservative coalition. Pro-natalist, populist, and reform conservatives—groups that overlap considerably—favor the goals of supporting parenthood and one-worker families, but with distance from the welfare reform debates of the 1990s, fewer conservatives than in the past worry about the risk of encouraging single parenthood and no-worker families.