Recent Publications

Child Poverty

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2021-06-24T13:37:31-05:00

  What You Need to Know About Rental Assistance: A Brief Background on the Basics

Federal rental assistance is a set of several programs—mostly administered through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Department of Agriculture with support from tax credits— that help families with little or no income cover their housing costs. These programs help in many different ways, but the basic concept is that families with low incomes contribute a certain, sustainable amount of their income to their monthly rent payments and the government covers the rest. In total, these programs help more than 9 million people in 4.6 million households, more than a third of which were households with children.

2021-06-17T08:47:11-05:00

  What You Need to Know About TANF: A Brief Background on the Basics

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is a federal block grant program for states, tribes, and territories designed to help families with a variety of services. States receive the block grant funding and use it to administer programs that provide cash assistance, child care, work supports and activities, child welfare, and more. States also use the funding to help families with children experiencing poverty pay for groceries, rent, diapers, clothing, and other basic necessities. In Fiscal Year 2020, which spans from October 2019 – September 2020, more than 1 million families—including more than 2 million children—received TANF assistance.

2021-06-09T08:59:20-05:00

  To Reach Every Child, the Child Tax Credit Eligibility Requirements Must Be Changed

To ensure that no child is excluded from the CTC because of their family structure, frequency of moving, or their involvement in other systems, Congress must make critical changes to the definition of “qualifying child” for the purpose of the CTC. To expand eligibility, the CTC should be accessible to all children regardless of their relationship to their caregiver and the bene t should continue to support children and their families as their living arrangements change.

2021-06-08T14:58:40-05:00

  CDF Urges Congress to Pass a Robust Child Nutrition Reauthorization (CNR) Bill and Ensure Equitable Access to Meals

Children and families need ongoing support and access to healthy, nutritious meals during the pandemic and beyond. We cannot revert back to strict, outdated, and inflexible standards that leave millions of children—disproportionately Black, Latinx, and Indigenous children—behind and vulnerable to hunger. To truly build back better and advance racial equity, we must fully and finally eliminate barriers to healthy food and success for all children. Congress can—and must—begin right now and advance a bold CNR bill.

2021-05-11T10:08:46-05:00

  The IRS Must Better Connect Families to Online Tools to Guarantee All Eligible Families Receive the 2021 Advance Child Tax Credit

The Automatic Benefit for Children (ABC) coalition writes with recommendations to better connect families who have not recently filed taxes with simple, easy, and straightforward online tools to guarantee that all eligible families receive the 2021 advance Child Tax Credit (CTC). In these times of extreme financial uncertainty, it is critical that people receive economic support as efficiently as possible.

2021-04-14T14:46:43-05:00

  Billionaires vs. Babies: How Congress Favors the Rich Over Our Children and How We Can Fix It

Over the past several decades, the United States has built a system that favors billionaires over babies and perpetuates economic inequality and racial disparities that harm America’s children. But it doesn't have to be this way: Here are eight ways Congress could fight inequality through the tax code and invest in children instead of billionaires.

2021-04-06T11:34:41-05:00

  Understanding the Expanded Child Tax Credit

The American Rescue Plan includes a significant, one-year expansion to the Child Tax Credit (CTC). Millions of newly eligible children and their families will benefit from this major expansion, and successful implementation is now key to realizing a significant reduction in child poverty, building racial equity, and creating a public investment for the good of all children. Here’s what you need to know about the expanded CTC.

2021-03-29T14:18:23-05:00

  More than 120 Organizations Call for a Permanent Expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC)

The Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) and the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP), co-chairs of the Automatic Benefit for Children (ABC) Coalition and more than 120 national and state organizations call on the Biden Administration to include a permanent expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) in their legislative priorities for the COVID recovery package to ensure reductions in child poverty and racial disparities continue beyond this year.

2021-04-22T09:12:57-05:00

  The State of America’s Children® 2021

Since the Children’s Defense Fund last published our annual State of America’s Children report in February 2020, our children have experienced a year of unprecedented upheaval due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a racial reckoning years in the making. Every aspect of children’s lives has been impacted by these shifts more quickly than data can track; even the most recent available data sets do not fully encompass how this past year has shaped our lives. This, of course, includes our 2021 State of America’s Children report. Because, as one element of the report makes clear, “Our Children are Not Immune.”