The Expanded Child Tax Credit and Educational Attainment in Rural, Majority-Minority Communities

Ethan Bennett and Mengzhong Zhang
Additional contact information
Ethan Bennett: Loans Administrator, Erie County Redevelopment Authority, Erie, PA, USA
Mengzhong Zhang: MPA program director, Gannon University, Erie, PA, USA

Journal of Economic Analysis, 2023, vol. 2, issue 4, 47-62

Abstract: Despite the status of the United States as one of the world’s economic superpowers, the country is plagued by child poverty. The issue of child poverty is most prominent in rural, majority-minority communities, where years of limited opportunity, often created by systematic oppression, have created a vicious cycle of economic despair. There are a number of policies that have been explored which could limit the effects of child poverty, most notably the Expanded Child Tax Credit (ECTC), which was introduced as part of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021. This paper uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to thoroughly examine this policy (ECTC) and its potential to both cut child poverty in the short term and increase educational attainment and economic mobility in the long term for recipients. The ECTC program ended in 2022 and only lasted in a short period. By examining the impacts of a similar and long-standing but less accessible and generous program, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), on educational attainment in specific communities we can theorize and determine the significance the Expanded CTC would have. We use EITC program as a proxy of ECTC and reach inference of the long-term impact of ECTC program on children’s education attainment. The result of this research indicates a number of benefits of the Expanded Child Tax Credit, including its potential to cut child poverty and increase educational attainment, its impact on future economic prosperity in rural, majority-minority communities, and the policy’s ability to decrease economic disparities between non-metro and metropolitan areas.

Keywords: Expanded child tax credit; educational attainment; rural; majority-minority communities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.anserpress.org/journal/jea/2/4/39/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.anserpress.org/journal/jea/2/4/39 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bba:j00001:v:2:y:2023:i:4:p:47-62:d:61

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Analysis is currently edited by Ramona Wang

More articles in Journal of Economic Analysis from Anser Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ramona Wang ().