Under Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ child poverty will rise again | Opinion

In 2021, something remarkable happened: the United States cut its child poverty rate nearly in half. This wasn’t due to a booming economy or a new war on poverty. It was thanks to the expanded Child Tax Credit, passed during the COVID pandemic. For one year, families received a tax credit up to $3,600 per child, which allowed even the lowest-income households to fully benefit.

The result was the lowest child poverty rate on record: 5.2%, down from 9.7% the year before. Researchers estimate that around 3 million children were lifted out of poverty. But rather than make this success permanent, Congress let it expire at the end of 2021. Child poverty rates quickly rebounded, with some estimates showing rates back above 15% in 2023.

Right now, the U.S. Senate is actively debating President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which could reshape the future of the Child Tax Credit. This is a critical moment, because what Congress decides in the coming days will determine whether millions of children — including nearly 1 million in California — will receive the support they need or get left behind.

The Child Tax Credit is a federal tax benefit designed to support families by offsetting the high cost of raising children, traditionally with larger benefits for low- and middle-income households. Much like the Earned Income Tax Credit, it is one of the nation’s most effective anti-poverty policies.

But helping the poor the most isn’t what Congress seems to currently have in mind.

Now, the House has proposed a new tax bill that includes a permanent $2,000 per-child Child Tax Credit, an extension of the 2017 Trump-era increase. But the fine print matters: The refundability of the credit is capped at $1,700, and the benefits phase in with income. In other words, families with higher earnings receive the full benefit, while the poorest households — those most in need — do not.

Columbia University recently estimated that more than 2 million children in our state (nearly one out of four Californians under 18) would receive less than the full benefit because their parents don’t earn enough.

Worse, the bill introduces a requirement that both the child and parent have a verifiable Social Security number to qualify. This would exclude millions of immigrant and mixed-status families whose children are U.S. citizens. This would, in effect, create a “marriage penalty” for some families in which one parent is not a U.S. citizen, including many veteran and active-duty parents.

In California alone, nearly 1 million children could lose access to the credit completely because of this provision. Nationwide, estimates suggest around 4.5 million children would be disqualified.

The U.S. already has one of the highest child poverty rates among developed nations. Children growing up in poverty face serious long-term consequences: worse educational outcomes, lower lifetime earnings and a higher risk of physical and mental health issues.

As a policy professor training future social workers, I know firsthand that economic precarity is at the root of many of the crises our field is called to address — from housing instability to behavioral challenges in school. Rather than continuing to expand the ranks of social workers to respond to the fallout of poverty, we should invest in proven, preventative policies like the 2021 Child Tax Credit expansion.

If we had stronger, more inclusive policies, maybe we wouldn’t need quite so many social workers to manage these problems after the fact.

Child poverty should be a nonpartisan issue. But the current bill proposes a version of the Child Tax Credit that helps the middle class and leaves behind the poor. In fact, a newly released report by the Congressional Budget Office estimates that, combined with the other lopsided benefits of the tax bill (including cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid), this version of the budget bill would contribute to an average net gain of $12,000 to wealthy families and a $1,600 net loss to poor families.

Raising tax credits for higher-income families who already have enough while excluding those with the highest need is simply bad policy.

We can do better. Congress should restore the fully refundable Child Tax Credit, ensure immigrant families aren’t excluded and recommit to ending child poverty as a national priority.