Emergency measures introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic had begun to offer working families a step up out of extreme poverty. Introduced in 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan, President Biden’s pandemic-relief package, the expanded child tax credit helped pull some families out of poverty. Had the extended tax credit remained in place, child poverty would have been nearly 50 percent lower in 2022.
However, faced with opposition from Republicans and members of his own party, Biden dropped efforts to extend this program. The result was a dramatic rise of poverty rates, especially among children, in 2022, when the poverty rate rose to 12.4% from 7.8% in 2021 — the largest one-year jump on record.