Investing in kids’ healthy development should be a national priority. Spending on kids today has long-term implications for tomorrow’s workforce; economy; and educational, criminal justice, and health care systems. But overall spending on children represents a relatively small share of total federal spending, and that share is dwindling.

In 2018, overall federal spending on children younger than 19 fell from recent years to about $6,200 per child. Education and other discretionary spending categories saw the steepest declines last year, as they were squeezed by growing spending on health and retirement programs, as well as interest payments on the national debt.

To better understand how the federal government spends money on children, let’s start by looking at trends in federal spending on elementary and secondary education.