Methodology & Sources

Methodology

Determining how much money the federal government spends on children each year is no simple task (for purposes of this site, children are defined as people aged 18 and under). While there are many federally-supported programs that are entirely dedicated to families with children or to children themselves, there are also many others for which children constitute only a portion of the beneficiaries. There are still other programs that may impact children much more incidentally. In determining the amount of money spent on children, this site draws on the work of the Urban Institute in their First Focus commissioned report, "Kids' Share 2008: How Children Fare in the Federal Budget." The Kids' Share methodology is straightforward:

  1. For programs that directly benefit only children and families with children, the full funding level counts as "children's spending."
  2. For programs that do not limit their benefits to children, the share of program funding that counts as "children's spending" mirrors the estimated percentage of program benefits that go to children. For example, annual reports indicate that about half of all Food Stamp benefits go to children. Therefore, ChildrensBudget.org counts 50% of Food Stamp spending as "children's spending."

There are certain exceptions. Some of the large entitlement programs, like Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and the Disability Trust Fund report how much of their program outlays go to children. In these cases, this site merely reports this amount.

For more specific and detailed methodology on how the share of funding from each program was determined, consult the Data Appendix to the Kids' Share 2008 report. Note, however, that ChildrensBudget.org makes certain adjustments for the sake of clarity and ease of use.  For example, on this site, 50% of Food Stamp spending is classified as "children's spending," whereas Kids' Share 2008 uses percentages varying from 49.4 to 50.4 in recent years.

For the few instances where ChildrensBudget.org diverges substantially from Kids' Share methodology, the alternative sources and methodology are noted on the specific program page.

Sources

The vast majority of the budget numbers on ChildrensBudget.org come from the yearly appropriation bills considered by Congress. For each of the various appropriation bills, the House and Senate produce a report on their respective legislation that describes proposed funding levels and also lists the previous year's appropriation levels. For example, the fiscal year 2008 appropriation bills are an excellent source to find the actual funding levels for fiscal year 2007. This method was used to gather the funding levels for most programs.

Some exceptions, however, are the large entitlement programs like Medicaid and Old Age and Survivors Insurance. Spending levels for these programs come from the Congressional Budget Office's supplemental tables. This being the case, the most recent numbers are estimates. 

In a few cases, there are additional or different sources for budget and spending data.  In these cases, the additional or different sources are noted on the specific program page.