User:Jaydavidmartin/Child tax credit (United States)

Lower benefits for low-income people
The child tax credit has been criticized for excluding low income-families—who are in most desperate need of financial assistance and who reap the largest relative gain in income from the benefit—from obtaining the full benefit or even any of the benefit. Under the current CTC, the refundable benefit phases in at a rate of 15% and very low-income families making less than $2,500 receive no benefit. As a result, about one-in-five families with eligible children have incomes too low to receive the full credit. Furthermore, according to Columbia University's Center on Poverty and Social Policy, over 50% of black and Hispanic children are in families with incomes too low to receive the full benefit and nearly 1-in-5 black children are in families with incomes too low to receive any of the credit.

Excluding the poorest families from the full benefit substantially reduces the poverty alleviation effects of the CTC: the Jain Family Institute, for instance, estimates that making the child tax credit fully refundable—without any change to benefit levels—would reduce child poverty by 19%.