Thread by @TrisiDanilo

HISTORIC GAINS FOR CHILDREN: Today’s @uscensusbureau data show that the expanded #ChildTaxCredit drove a record-breaking drop in child poverty in 2021.
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The #ChildTaxCredit expansion drove a record-breaking drop in child poverty: from 9.7% in 2020 to 5.2% in 2021. Without the expansion, it would have been 8.1% in 2021 & 2.1 million more kids would have been in poverty, Census calculated. census.gov/library/storie…

The #ChildTaxCredit expansion lifted 2.1 million children out of poverty in 2021. This included 752,000 Latino children, 650,000 white children, 600,000 Black children, and 56,000 Asian children, Census calculated. See Table 2 here:
census.gov/library/storie…

Between 2020 and 2021, child poverty fell dramatically for all children and gaps in poverty rates between racial and ethnic groups narrowed. For Black children, poverty fell from 17.2% in 2021 to 8.3% in 2020. For Latino children, it fell from 14.7% to 8.4%.

For American Indian & Alaska Native children, poverty fell from 15.2% in 2020 to 7.4% in 2021. For Asian children, it fell from 6.7% to 5.1%. For white children, it fell from 5.7% to 2.7%. See table B-2 here:
census.gov/library/public…

The #ChildTaxCredit expansion drove the sharp drop in Child Poverty in 2021. Without it, poverty would have fallen from 9.7% in 2020 to 8.1% in 2021, Census calculated. Once the expansion is counted, child poverty fell sharply to 5.2% in 2021.

Income supplements such as the #ChildTaxCredit have been found to boost children's school performance, health & future earnings. After the strains & educational disruptions of the pandemic, this is the support kids need, but policymakers allowed last year’s expansion to expire.

The child poverty in 2021 of 5.2% was substantially lower than pre-pandemic levels – in 2018 it stood at 13.7%. (This is the last year where data collection was unaffected by the pandemic.) The reason – both the #ChildTaxCredit expansion & other relief measures.

The expanded #ChildTaxCredit helped bring child poverty to a new record low in 2021 as measured by the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) both using Census’s SPM data, which starts in 2009, and in our own analysis of Census data augmented by @CpspPoverty that goes back to 1967.

If the #ChildTaxCredit expansion had not expired at the end of 2021, it would have continued to push down poverty among children this year and beyond, even as other relief measures phase out.

Policymakers should pursue opportunities this year to stave off a sharp rise in child poverty by expanding the #ChildTaxCredit.

Of particular importance is making the #ChildTaxCredit fully available again to children in families with the lowest incomes who need it the most. Doing so – known as full refundability – was essential to the sharp decline in child poverty in 2021.

Congress can help families meet their basic needs by expanding the #ChildTaxCredit. 9 in 10 families with low incomes spent their #ChildTaxCredit payments on necessities — food, housing, clothing, utilities — and education.

The recent historic reduction in child poverty has been driven by robust government policies. Without government assistance, the child poverty rate would have been 21.8% in 2021. Once that assistance is counted, child poverty was 5.2%.

Economic recovery legislation that provided stimulus payments, expanded unemployment insurance, and expanded the #ChildTaxCredit drove the sharp decline in child poverty in recent years.