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I'm terribly afraid the real answer is "we don't want to."

For anyone interested in reducing child poverty, there was heartening bad news out of Britain last month. In 1999 the Blair government introduced an initiative to end child poverty by 2020, with an initial goal of cutting it by one-quarter by April of last year. Recently the government reported that it missed that target: The number of children in poverty dropped by "only" about 17 percent -- some 700,000 kids over the past five years.

If only we could have such problems in this country.

Since 2000 the number of American children living in poverty has risen 12 percent -- to 13 million. The initial growth was due to the economic downturn. But since then, despite the ongoing expansion, the poverty rate for children on this side of the pond keeps rising, largely because the benefits of the recovery have flowed so disproportionately to families at the top of the income scale.

via The Washington Post

Tony Blair announced a target in 1999 of eliminating child poverty in the UK by 2020. They don't claim to have all the answers, but it sure looks like they're doing better than we are.