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Former Congresswoman Jackie Speier knew there was deep, persistent poverty affecting thousands of families in one of the wealthiest counties in America, but when she returned to San Mateo County full time in January 2023 after 15 years in Congress, she rededicated herself to creating progress. San Mateo County, home to over 20 billionaires and ranked as the fourth richest county in the United States, also has more than 30,000 mothers and children living in or near poverty. This contradiction is impossible to ignore.
Determined to act, Jackie launched a series of county-wide listening tours, where she met with community stakeholders, parents, and children. She heard the heartbreaking first-hand accounts of parents, many of whom are sole caretakers, working multiple jobs, children suffering from food insecurity, and in one shocking case, a young boy who attempted to end his own life so that his mother wouldn’t have to work so hard to provide for him.
It was during this time that Jackie discovered the Baby’s First Years study, a groundbreaking NIH-funded experimental trial launched in 2017 by researchers from Columbia University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and UC Irvine. The study found that unconditional monthly cash gifts of $333 to low-income mothers significantly reduced maternal stress and improved infant brain development in just one year. The striking finding that a baby’s brain doubles in size in the first year and reaches 80% of its adult volume by age three, emphasized the essential need for early interventions. According to research by the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, children get about half as many taxpayer resources, per person, as do the elderly. And among children, the youngest get the least. The annual federal investment in elementary school kids approaches $11,000 per child. For infants and toddlers up to age two, it is just over $4,000. When it comes to early childhood, public policy is lagging far behind science—with disastrous consequences.
Inspired, Jackie moved quickly. In partnership with Louise Rogers, Director of Health Services, and Stanford’s Income Lab, she organized the San Mateo County Rising: Ending Child Poverty Summit in August 2023. More than 350 local leaders, academics, healthcare executives, and advocates gathered. The keynote address was delivered by Dr. Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Evicted and Poverty, By America, whose work highlights the systemic forces driving inequality.
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