The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program leaves many families short of food at the end of the month—and many necessary items aren’t even covered by food stamps. Think toilet paper. Think diapers, which are the focus of a new bill introduced by House Democrats. Reps. Keith Ellison and Rosa DeLauro’s Hygiene Assistance for Families of Infants and Toddlers Act would “create a demonstration project to allow states to provide diapers or a diaper subsidy for low-income and working families.” This isn't a small issue:
Diapers constitute an enormous expense for low-income families anywhere in the U.S. An adequate supply — up to 240 of them a month for one infant — can cost nearly $1,000 a year. Nearly 30 percent of women have experienced a time when they couldn’t afford diapers for their children. That burden falls far heavier on the poor than on those who are better off. The people in the lowest quintile of income, making an average of just over $11,000 a year, spends nearly 14 percent of its income on diapers. The next quintile, those who make about $29,000 a year, still spend 5 percent of its income on them. Yet the richest only has to expend 1 percent of its income.
Parents are forced to delay changing their children’s diapers, try to reuse diapers, or try to potty train children before the age doctors recommend.
That might be why, in a study of 877 pregnant and parenting women published in Pediatrics in 2013, a team of researchers found that needing diapers and not being able to buy them was a leading cause of mental health problems among new moms.
Ellison and DeLauro’s bill is one more that we can expect Republicans to sneer at and block, highlighting the importance of electing Democrats. We’re talking about babies here.