Bipartisan Child Tax Credit Expansion Delivers Support for Latino Families

In the coming weeks, the U.S. Senate can provide a meaningful income boost to more than 6 million Latino children in low-income families by passing the House-passed bipartisan tax bill that would expand the Child Tax Credit.

This bill is our best hope this year to significantly reduce child poverty, and the Senate should act without delay to advance it to the President’s desk.

Currently, the Child Tax Credit provides less help to the children who need it most: millions of children receive a partial credit or no credit at all because their parents’ incomes are too low. This legislation would provide a larger credit to most of these children who are currently left behind, benefitting more than 1 in 3 Latino children in the first year.

The Child Tax Credit expansion would help millions of children whose parents or other caregivers do important work for low pay, including delivery drivers, home health aides, child care workers, cashiers, and working people in many other occupations who often face unpredictable hours and low wages.

It would also make a difference in the lives of roughly half a million children in veteran and active-duty families, along with millions more children in other families with low incomes living in rural areas. This includes 39 percent of Latino children in rural areas where pay is generally lower, and families are less likely to receive the full credit.

The expanded Child Tax Credit would provide meaningful support to about 6 million young children under age 6 in its first year. Consider, for example, a married couple with a kindergartner, a toddler, and a newborn. One parent earns $30,000 as a cashier while the other parent stays home to care for their children. The expansion would boost this family’s credit by $1,275 in the first year. That’s crucial income that can help Latino families with low earnings afford basic essentials like rent, groceries, and putting gas in their cars so they can get to work and take their kids to school each day.

This extra income boost would make a real difference in these children’s lives; many studies have found that providing additional income to families with low resources results in lasting benefits for children’s health, education, and future earnings. That means children may be better set up to succeed in school and go on to earn higher wages in stable careers later in life.

The benefits of this proposal would reach 16 million children in families with low incomes, including over 6 million Latino children. It would also lift as many as 400,000 children across the country above the poverty line in the first year and provide more financial support to an additional 3 million children in families with incomes below the poverty line. The impact would be larger in 2025 when the changes are fully in effect.

The Senate should take advantage of this opportunity to provide crucial support to more Latino children – and children of all races and ethnicities – in families with low incomes, and swiftly pass the bipartisan tax bill into law.

(*) About the authors:

Sarah Calame is a Research Associate on the Federal Fiscal Policy team at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). Previously, she interned for the Center’s Government Affairs team, as well as the Tax Policy Center and the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus. Calame has an A.B. in Economics and Public Policy from Brown University.

Stephanie Hingtgen is a Senior Research Analyst with the Federal Fiscal and Income and Poverty Trends teams at CBPP. Prior to joining the Center, Stephanie supported health services research projects focused on vulnerable populations at the University of Michigan Medical School. Stephanie received her MPP from the University of Michigan, and a BA in Spanish and a Certificate in International Business from the University of Iowa.

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