Raegen Selden talked with CBS Evening News about how the [...]

The Census Bureau released data this week indicating that families with children experienced high rates of financial hardship and economic insecurity for a second year in a row, as policymakers have allowed critical pandemic-era investments in children and families to expire. Lawmakers’ decision to sunset investments in children and families over the last two years has had predictably devastating results. In 2022, when the temporary expansion of the CTC expired, child poverty more than doubled, from 5.2 to 12.4 percent, and as this week’s Census data show it remained high in 2023. In 2023, refundable credits still lifted 6.4 million people out of poverty, including 3.4 million children; the CTC alone lifted approximately 1.4 million children out of poverty. But because lawmakers have failed to reinstate the CTC expansion, refundable credits are doing less to reduce poverty than we saw in 2021, when 9.6 million people were lifted out of poverty by refundable credits, and 5.3 million people, including 2.9 million children, were lifted out of poverty by the CTC alone.