Food insufficiency up 25% since Manchin, GOP killed child tax credit boost

A Boston-based research team on Friday reiterated the negative effects of ending the expanded child tax credit by releasing a study that shows a huge jump in U.S. households not having enough food.

The expanded child tax credit (CTC) in the American Rescue Plan gave over 35 million U.S. families up to $300 a month per child until it expired last December, and congressional Republicans and right-wing Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) opposed continuing it.

Published in the journal JAMA Network Open, the new study focuses on food insufficiency, “a marker for economic strain… defined by household lack of enough food to eat in the last seven days.”

Researchers at Boston Medical Center (BMC) and Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) found that ending the monthly payments resulted in a 25% increase in household food insufficiency by early July 2022 compared with the period just before CTC expiration.

Lead author Allison Bovell-Ammon said in a statement that “this significant increase in food insufficiency among families with children is particularly concerning for child health equity, as child health, development, and educational outcomes are strongly linked to their family’s ability to afford enough food.”

“Even brief periods of deprivation during childhood can have lasting impacts on a child,” added Bovell-Ammon, director of policy and communications for Children’s HealthWatch at BMC.

The study states that “low-income, single-adult, non-Hispanic Black, and Hispanic households experienced greater increases than the overall sample, suggesting implications of deepening inequities linked to the policy expiration. Without further congressional action to extend the expanded CTC and reinstate monthly payments, reductions in food insufficiency, poverty, and inequity following the advance CTC payment introduction in 2021 may continue to erode.”

As various studies and data sets have made clear that the CTC payments lifted millions of children out of poverty and cutting them off harmed families, some progressives in Congress and policy experts have called for not only reinstating the program but making it permanent.

“The six short months of these child tax credit advanced payments clearly made a big difference for American families, a permanent expansion would be a game-changer for reducing child poverty for good,” said study co-author Paul Shafer, an assistant professor at BUSPH.

The study comes just weeks before the midterm elections, which will determine which party controls the U.S. House and Senate.

“For now, the choice for Democratic candidates couldn’t be clearer: Campaign on renewing the expanded child tax credit,” Jim Pugh of the Universal Income Project and ShareProgress recently wrote for In These Times. “It will help their chances at the polls in November and bring the country closer to reviving the most impactful anti-poverty program in a generation.”

Originally published at Commondreams.org.