Children Left Behind by the H.R.1 Child Tax Credit

This new Robin Hood-funded policy brief from the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University explores the Child Tax Credit (CTC), which provides families in the United States with up to $2,000 per child to help them with the costs of raising children. But two central elements of the credit’s design— its refundability structure and earnings requirement—lead families to need a certain level of income to qualify for the full $2,000 per child credit.

These two elements leave low- and moderate-income families less likely to qualify fully for the credit. As a result, millions of children in low- and moderate-income families are currently ineligible for the full credit of $2,000 per child, or are “left behind,” because their family income is not high enough for them to qualify fully. In 2023, roughly 17 million children—or 1 in 4 children in the United States—were left behind according to this definition.

This brief examines how the number of children ineligible for the full Child Tax Credit could change under the budget reconciliation bill passed by the US House of Representatives in late May 2025 (H.R.1, 119th Congress). H.R.1 increases the maximum Child Tax Credit from $2,000 to $2,500 per child, but makes no changes to the other central elements of the credit (its refundability structure and earnings requirement) that tie the credit amount that a family receives to its income level.