Analysis: Child poverty a hidden focus of virus relief plan

BALTIMORE (AP) — Tucked inside President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan is a seemingly radical notion that children should not grow up in poverty.

Congressional Democrats are now sketching out that vision more fully by proposing to temporarily raise the child tax credit, now at a maximum of $2,000, to as much as $3,600 per child annually. Their plan would also make the credit fully available to the poorest families, instead of restricting it based on the parents’ tax liability.

“The Democratic plan would likely mark the most significant step in the fight against child poverty since LBJ’s Great Society,” said Daniel Hemel, a law professor at the University of Chicago, who noted that a family with two school-age children and no income would get $6,000 under the proposal.

This one-off benefit is intended to help relieve millions of families hurt by the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Parents have lost their access to child care, pushing them out of the labor force and hindering the economic recovery. Children have gone without the classroom time needed for social and academic progress.

When Lyndon Johnson became president in 1963, nearly 25% of children lived in poverty. The combination of Great Society programs that included nutrition aid and preschool funding helped slash the child poverty rate to 14% by 1969, according to the Census Bureau. The rate has since bounced up and down with the broader economy, but it has never fallen meaningfully below that 1969 level.

Biden has pitched his rescue plan as an immediate response to the pandemic, but the child tax credit expansion might end up seeding the kind of lasting change that tends to bring a political fight. Some conservatives say the plan would discourage parents from working and would not reduce poverty as a result. But...