Congress must tackle child poverty head on and expand the Child Tax Credit
The Census Bureau just released national poverty, income, and insurance data for 2023. It’s important to understand income and health insurance trends, but it’s especially important now since Congress will take up major tax legislation in 2025.
One thing we know for sure is that when the Child Tax Credit (CTC) was expanded in 2021, child poverty decreased by 46% overall, with Black and Hispanic/Latino child poverty falling by 6.3 percentage points in each community, impacting 716,000 Black children and 1.2 million Hispanic children. The new data shows that in 2023, the CTC lifted 2.4 million people above the federal poverty line―while important, falling far short of the 5.4 million lifted above the federal poverty line in 2021 by expanded monthly Child Tax Credit payments that included all children in low-income families.
Many people are facing food and housing insecurity, challenges with high child care costs, and dealing with other hardships that make it harder to make ends meet. Expanding the Child Tax Credit fixes a major flaw in current law: over 18 million children and their families are excluded from the full credit because their parents’ income is too low.
You read that right. Families where a parent can’t work due to illness or being laid off, cannot qualify for the Child Tax Credit at all. And many parents who work at low wages cannot get the full CTC. A single parent earning $15,000 a year and who has two children, will receive less than a family with a parent who has a higher paying job. This is a flaw that does nothing but exacerbate inequity and accelerate the racial wealth gap.
Instead of cutting investments in key programs and services, Congress must prioritize funding for human needs and that means passing an expanded Child Tax Credit that reaches the very poorest households.
Across the country, support is building for Congress to once again expand the Child Tax Credit, with an increasing number of local media outlets taking note of the growing rise in hunger among families with children since the additional CTC payments were halted last December.
On Tuesday, in a story headlined “A push to revive Child Tax Credit for struggling NH families,” Public News Service (PNS) reported that the number of New Hampshire families with children who report they “sometimes or often” did not have enough to eat in the previous week has increased by 50 percent in the last year.
The story quotes Michael Reinke, Executive Director of the Nashua Soup Kitchen and Shelter, who said requests for family food boxes are up 25 percent from this time last year. His organization is urging lawmakers to make restoring the Child Tax Credit a top priority.
“Running out of the things that are more expensive — running out of meat, running out of milk, eggs — those are the highest demand right now,” Reinke observed.
Reinke added that the majority of people he meets at the soup kitchen are working, sometimes at more than one job. “You can be working full-time and still not be able to make all of your ends meet,” Reinke emphasized.
The story reports that in Utah, just a year after the monthly payments stopped, the number of families with children reporting food insecurity increased by 74 percent. Gina Cornia, Executive Director of Utahns Against Hunger, told PNS that lawmakers should reinstate the $300- to $360-per-child payments, especially with inflationnear double-digits.
“With the price of food, and with the price of gas and all of these other financial pressures these families are feeling, reinstating the monthly Child Tax Credit would really help ease those economic concerns for families,” Cornia contended.
Look for a number of other stories detailing how families need the expanded Child Tax Credit to pop up in the next week and a half or so. We’ll bring them to you when they do!
