Tuesday’s release of data about poverty, income, and health insurance will reinforce vital lessons.  We learned that the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC), in place in 2021, reduced child poverty nearly by half.  Despite this historic gain for children, there were not enough votes in Congress to continue the CTC expansion. So the nation got another, much more painful, lesson: in 2022, the child poverty rate as measured by the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure more than doubled, rising from 5.2 percent in 2021 to 12.4 percent in 2022.  What happened to child poverty in 2023 is one of the most important findings to look for on Tuesday.  If child poverty remains substantially higher than it was when families benefited from the expanded Child Tax Credit, it confirms the lesson we have already learned: we must restore the expanded CTC. 

We have already learned that households are experiencing deeper hardship  by households in 2023. USDA’s food security report, released on September 4, found that the number of children in food insecure households rose from 9.3 million in 2021 to 13.8 million in 2023 – with continued disparities by race and ethnicity.  Further, the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse survey found that in 2021, 9.9 percent of people with children said their households sometimes or often did not have enough to eat in the previous seven days.  By 2023, that rate had risen to 15 percent.  A number of factors contributed to surging hardship, including higher food prices and post-pandemic reduced nutrition benefits.  But the loss of at least $1,000 per child from the CTC’s (with the poorest families losing far more) undeniably contributed to hunger and other hardships for families. 

Tomorrow’s data will also reinforce lessons about health insurance.  Other data sources suggest that there will be further reductions in the number of uninsured people, and that much of that improvement comes from dramatic increases in the number of people getting insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace for individuals.  We know from existing data that the number of people with ACA marketplace insurance rose from 14.5 million in 2022 to 16.4 million in 2023 (and, although the data on Tuesday only reach through 2023, these other sources tell us that in 2024, the number of people with marketplace coverage surged to 21.3 million).  These increases are likely to contribute to a further reduction in the number of uninsured people, which will be very good news.  Here too, there are important policy lessons: during the pandemic, the subsidies for marketplace health insurance premiums rose, and those subsidies were later extended through 2025.  In order to keep health insurance affordable for millions of Americans, Congress must prevent the Advance Premium Tax Credits, which provide the subsidies, from expiring at the end of 2025. 

We also know that tomorrow’s data will not tell the full story about health insurance.  With the end of the pandemic emergency, states started to terminate people from Medicaid in 2023, with more terminations occurring in 2024.  Some of those people shifted to the ACA marketplace insurance, but many simply lost coverage, and we know that many were terminated because they never received notices, or did not understand the documentation they were supposed to supply, or found it difficult to supply.  Many of these people remained eligible, but lost coverage anyway.  To ensure that the number of uninsured people continues to decline, we must ensure that eligible people continue to receive Medicaid. 

What else will we be looking for?  We know that last year, above-inflation income gains were made by Black and Hispanic/Latino households.  This was good news, although their incomes remained considerably below White and Asian households.  We will be looking to see whether the gains persist.  We know that the loss of the expanded Child Tax Credit resulted in painful increases in child poverty for Black and Hispanic/Latino children: from 8.1 percent in 2021 to 17.8 percent in 2022 for Black children; from 8.4 percent in 2021 to 19.5 percent in 2022 for Hispanic/Latino children.  Here too, we see that restoring the expanded Child Tax Credit can significantly lessen the shamefully higher poverty among people of color. 

We have learned what works to reduce hardship and poverty, and to reduce the number of people without health insurance.  We are likely to see those lessons reinforced with the 2023 data.  Congress should use what we’ve learned.