Sometimes a visual is all it takes to understand a problem. I came across this map, produced by the Urban Institute, which estimates how many diapers it would take to address the gap faced by households with children 3 and younger that are below 300 percent of the federal poverty level. The findings are startling—it would take an average of almost 4.8 billion diapers each year to fill the gap.
Raising awareness of this gap can help federal, state, and local policymakers, as well as advocates and community leaders, develop strategies to improve access to diapers and, most importantly, ensure families have what they need to be healthy and thrive.
This map illustrates how many diapers it would take to fill the gap faced by families with low-to-moderate incomes in a given US county.