Here's What You Need to Remember: The White House has confirmed that these enhanced credits will target nearly forty million financially wounded American families—with the initial monthly direct cash payments beginning on July 15.

Continuing the expanded child tax credit that was first introduced under President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan will positively affect nearly sixty-six million U.S. children, according to a new study conducted by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Moreover, in terms of lifting children out of poverty, the credits would benefit more than four million low-income children—slashing the overall poverty rate by roughly 40 percent, the study’s data showed. According to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau, about thirty-four million people live in poverty in the United States.

Under the current plan, the child tax credit will financially assist eligible parents through the end of this year. But if Biden’s nearly $2 trillion American Families Plan ever gets green-lighted by Congress, the credit could be extended well beyond this year—through 2025.

“For our economy to fully recover from this pandemic, we must finally acknowledge that workers have families, and caregiving responsibilities are real,” Rep. Richard Neal recently said.

Neal, the chairman of the highly influential House Ways and Means Committee, has introduced legislation to make the changes to the child tax credit permanent.

“Congress should adopt these proposed changes, which would result in reductions of child poverty and provide income support for millions of people,” the study’s authors wrote.

“And it should go two steps further: it should make all of the Rescue Plan’s Child Tax Credit expansion permanent and make certain immigrant children who have an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) rather than a Social Security number eligible.”

According to a separate recent report released by the Economic Security Project, it revealed that more rounds of stimulus checks have the potential to lift twelve million Americans out of poverty. “Evidence from the last year shows stimulus checks to be the fastest and most impactful investments helping Americans get through this crisis, lifting more people out of poverty than any other single policy,” the authors wrote.

The White House has confirmed that these enhanced credits will target nearly forty million financially wounded American families—with the initial monthly direct cash payments beginning on July 15. Biden’s stimulus bill enabled families to be eligible to claim as much as $3,600 per year for a child under the age of six and up to $3,000 for children between ages six and seventeen—meaning that for a family headed by a couple earning less than $150,000, or an individual making under $75,000, they can now net a $250 or $300 payment each month.

In addition, eighteen-year-olds and full-time college students who are twenty-four and under can give parents a one-time $500 payment.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Minneapolis-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn. This article first appeared earlier this year.

Image: Reuters.