The expanded child tax credit briefly slashed child poverty. Here’s what else it did
“One of the reasons these monthly payments had such a significant impact on child poverty, Curran says, is because the expansion closed a large hole in the child tax credit.
Under the old rules, at least 23 million children didn’t qualify to receive the full benefit – because their families didn’t earn enough money. As an example, Curran points out that a two-parent, two-child household needed to earn at least $36,000 a year to qualify for the full benefit. As a result, many of the kids who needed help the most, got the least.
While 2021’s short-lived expansion closed that hole, now that the monthly payments have stopped, Curran and her Columbia colleagues project that the monthly child poverty rate could quickly jump back up by one-third or more – just between December and January.”