More on Why Income Increases Matter

Alternatively, note that Child Trends says that the safety net reduced poverty by 9.2 percent (not 9.2 percentage points) in 1993. If it had only reduced poverty by 9.2 percent in 2019, then the change in child poverty would have still been 9.45 percentage points, which is the combined effect of pre-tax and -transfer income and taxes (58 percent larger than the effect of the safety net). Net out taxes and the effect of increase in pre-tax and -transfer income would be larger.