![]() “We haven’t seen these types of reductions in a long time,” Parolin said of the credit’s effect on childhood poverty, noting the persistently low poverty rates among children during the months the credit was available. The Columbia researchers found that measure alone kept roughly 3.5 million children out of poverty in each month for which data is available. It reached families that didn’t earn enough income to owe taxes, and it was paid in monthly installments from July to December 2021, instead of all at once in 2022. ![]() When the expanded credit went into effect in July, it raised benefits from $2,000 to $3,600 for children under 6 and to $3,000 for children ages 6 to 17. The researchers also looked closely at the expanded child tax credit, put in place by Congress’ March 2021 American Rescue Plan. She cited federal actions - economic impact payments (also known as stimulus checks), expanded unemployment insurance, increased food assistance and other measures - in averting a worst-case scenario. The team’s research found that without the early pandemic aid provided by the March 2020 CARES Act, poverty rates could potentially have rivaled those during the Great Recession. “The last two years taken together have probably shown us more clearly than any time in recent history how much policy matters,” Megan Curran, a Columbia researcher said. The Columbia team estimated that poverty in 2021 rose to a high of 14.3% in February and declined to 9.3% - its lowest level of the year - in March, when families received economic impact payments, as well as income tax and child tax credits. “In fact, throughout the entire year of 2021, the poverty rate has been lower than that 16.1% that we saw in December 2020,” Parolin said. But when some benefits were renewed or extended in January 2021, the monthly poverty estimate declined to 13.2%. According to the team’s data, the poverty rate in December 2020 - when many pandemic-related benefits had expired - was 16.1%. Zachary Parolin has been leading the Columbia researchers’ monthly estimates of U.S. So where does that leave American families now? Did Pandemic-Era Policies Affect Poverty in 2021? While researchers estimated that poverty declined in 2021, they cautioned that the trend could be temporary, with many pandemic-era benefits ending. The Census Bureau’s annual poverty figures for 2021 won’t be available until well into next year. Census Bureau’s 2020 supplemental poverty rate - which factors in families’ expenses, as well as government assistance like stimulus checks - falling to its lowest since the estimate was first published, in 2009.įRONTLINE has been documenting how poverty impacts families - and especially children - for several years, including in the documentaries Poor Kids (2017) and Growing Up Poor in America (2020). ![]() By one measure, last year was already a notable low, with the U.S. Pandemic-era benefits may have helped drive poverty in 2021 lower than in 2020, according to researchers at Columbia University’s Center on Poverty & Social Policy and at the nonprofit Urban Institute. When it comes to tracking how poverty impacts American families, and especially children, estimates for 2021 reveal something noteworthy.
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