Child Poverty

  • Child Poverty

    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.

  • Child Health

    The American Jobs Plan Will Help Ensure a Strong Economy and Future for Our Children

    The American Jobs Plan is the first of a two-part effort to invest in our children’s future and build towards a stronger and more equitable economy—with provisions to address long-standing racial disparities and funding designated specifically for underserved Black communities and other communities of color. Congress must now build on President Biden’s proposal and invest in our nation’s most precious resource—our children— ensuring we do not return to a fragile and inequitable status quo.

    | National

  • Child Poverty

    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.

  • Child Poverty

    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.”

  • Child Poverty

    What Would Raising the Minimum Wage Mean for Children?

    Families, workers, and children need at least $15 an hour or more not because working is connected to their worth or that people have to work to feel worthy, but because it is the morally and economically humane thing to do for our nation. It’s an investment in our neighbors, our children, and our families--for now and for the future.

    | National