You wouldn’t know it from watching the news, but American children are doing better than they were at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, at least when it comes to having their basic needs met.
That’s according to newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Even as the country suffered through a pandemic, global supply chain disruptions and rising inflation, child poverty rates declined to the lowest on record. As the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy concluded, much of this can be attributed to last year’s expansion of the Child Tax Credit.
The child tax credit expansion ended at the beginning of this year. Now some elected leaders are proposing to reinstate the expanded tax credit and, unfortunately, fund it by cutting important tax benefits for low- and moderate-income families rather than making corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes.
