Human Services News

From Urban Institute Latest ReportsSearch:

We chart U.S. federal spending on investment in total and for children from 1965 to 2017. Five major categories can be considered---some more so than others---to be investment or to have investment components: education and research, work supports, social supports, physical capital, and defense investment.

More important, projections of current policies show that overall government investment and especially investment in children are threatened to decline in relative and sometimes absolute importance, squeezed out mainly by faster, automatically growing programs that tend to favor consumption.

Poorer parents, in turn, often cannot afford quality education for their own children, even though all of society may benefit from a better-educated citizenry.

Further, when in the modern economy government becomes large, extracts resources through taxation, and spends much on consumption, it may without intention reduce societal investment unless it takes some offsetting measures.

In sum, a vital issue for government policy is how well government revenues are spent and invested and how they affect overall well-being not just now but for the future and for future generations.

This report charts how different categories of federal investment have fared in recent history and, perhaps more important, how the sums and proportions within each category are scheduled to change if current policies are continued.

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