Monthly Poverty Rates among Children after the Expansion of the Child Tax Credit

Zachary Parolin (), Sophie Collyer, Megan Curran and Christopher Wimer
Additional contact information
Sophie Collyer: Columbia University
Megan Curran: Columbia University

No 20412, Poverty and Social Policy Brief from Center on Poverty and Social Policy, Columbia University

Abstract: In July 2021, the first payments of the expanded Child Tax Credit were delivered to 59.3 million children nationwide as part of ongoing economic relief efforts amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The American Rescue Plan, passed in March, made three important changes to the Child Tax Credit for 2021: increasing benefit levels; expanding access to reach children in families with the lowest incomes; and paying the benefit out in monthly installments. Using our innovative approach to tracking monthly poverty rates, we project that ongoing COVID relief efforts continue to have a sizable effect on reducing child poverty keeping 6 million children from poverty in July 2021 alone (a reduction of more than 40 percent). This impact also resulted in a notable drop in child poverty between June and July 2021, due primarily to the rollout of the expanded Child Tax Credit. On its own, this new payment kept 3 million children from poverty in its first month. As rollout continues, the expanded Child Tax Credit has the potential to achieve even greater child poverty reduction. If all likely-eligible children are covered, it has the potential to reduce monthly child poverty by up to 40 percent on its own; in combination with all COVID-related relief, it could contribute to a 52 percent reduction in monthly child poverty. Expanding coverage to all eligible children is key to achieving the Child Tax Credit’s full anti-poverty potential, with the greatest gains to be realized for Black and Latino children.

Keywords: poverty; COVID-19; social policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 14 pages
Date: 2021-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-isf
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.povertycenter.columbia.edu/s/Monthly-P ... C-July-CPSP-2021.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (https://www.povertycenter.columbia.edu/s/Monthly-Poverty-with-CTC-July-CPSP-2021.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://povertycenter.columbia.edu/s/Monthly-Poverty-with-CTC-July-CPSP-2021.pdf)

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:aji:briefs:20412

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Poverty and Social Policy Brief from Center on Poverty and Social Policy, Columbia University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Zachary Parolin ().