A recent study released by the Urban Institute described a sharp decrease in the number of Americans living in poverty over the last three years, and much of that is being attributed to governmental COVID aid programs. Linda Giannarelli is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, joined Cheddar to break down how the unprecedented spending during the pandemic has helped tackle another social problem. "The single biggest contributor to the reduction in poverty was the stimulus checks," she said. "Just because of the stimulus checks, if all of the other elements had been in there, but the stimulus checks hadn't, there would be 12.4 million more people in poverty."