Addressing the Long-Term Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Children and Families (2023) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
6 Effects of Economic Policies
6 Effects of Economic Policies
Pages 172-210
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From page 172... ...
payments, the child tax credit, eviction moratoriums, and student loan relief measures) , and other safety net programs.
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Act: Signed into law on March 27, 2020, the CARES Act appropriated $2.2 trillion in funding for economic impact payments, often referred to as stimulus payments; further expansion to the federal UI programs; public service loan forgiveness for some student loans; expansion of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps) ; temporary suspension of student loan payments and evictions; and state- and local-level funding, including to tribal nations.
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From page 174... ...
. Labor Force Participation Effects Pandemic-era underemployment and unemployment are reflected in the dramatic increase in UI participation: 2.6 million UI claims were filed in the second quarter of 2019, compared with 33.7 million in the second quarter of 2020 (Perez-Lopez, 2021)
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. Overall, research on the effects of UI pandemic provisions suggests positive effects on family well-being, including reduced food and material hardships, attenuation of mental health duress, especially for lower-wage workers.
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For paid sick leave, qualifying workers could receive up to 80 hours of time off at their regular rate of pay for their own quarantine or COVID-19 symptoms or for that of an immediate family member. For paid family leave, qualifying workers could take up to 10 weeks off if they were unable to work because of the need to care for a child whose school or child care facility was closed; these workers received two-thirds of their regular rate of pay (DOL, 2020a)
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From page 177... ...
payments, the child tax credit, eviction moratoriums, and student loan relief measures. Economic Impact Payments The first stimulus payments were distributed to qualifying individuals and families between April 2020 and March 2021: $1,200 to individuals, $2,400 to married couples, and an additional $500 for each qualifying child.
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. Overall, the evidence suggests that households with fewer resources prior to the pandemic or became short of resources because of the pandemic used stimulus payments for essential goods, which aligns with a long line of scholarship on a similar federal cash transfer program, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC; Romich and Weisner, 2000; Smeeding et al., 2000; Mendenhall et al., 2012; Halpern-Meekin et al., 2015; Sykes et al., 2015)
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Analysis of the CTC's antipoverty effects found that monthly child poverty rates declined from about 16 percent in June 2021 to 12 percent in July 2021 after the first CTC payments. It is estimated that this benefit represented about 3 million children lifted out of poverty by the CTC, reducing monthly child poverty by an estimated 40 percent (Parolin et al., 2021b)
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This finding suggests that the distribution of direct cash to individuals and families successfully mitigated the potential deleterious consequences of the pandemic, bolstering family income and promoting the ability for families to purchase essential goods and services without the administrative difficulties of onerous applications or ongoing participation requirements inherent to many safety net programs (see Chapter 5)
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. In response to COVID-19 and the known consequences of eviction, the CARES Act banned evictions for 120 days from properties that participated in government programs or that had a federally backed mortgage, covering about 28 percent of rental units in the United States (Jowers et al., 2021; Layser et al., 2021)
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than other states, suggesting these policies also helped reduce evictions. Other components of the CARES Act also likely helped with housing stability, including stimulus and monthly child tax credit payments and safety net and expansions of unemployment insurance benefits.
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. Of note, unlike the CARES Act and some state moratoriums, the CDC moratorium was not self-executing, meaning that tenants needed to provide paperwork to prove that they were eligible for protection (Monea, 2021)
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It will be important for future work in this area to consider t' he long-run outcomes of the evictions moratoriums on landlords, especially small landlords with properties in economically disadvantaged communities, which endured some of the highest rates of nonpayment or delayed payment of rent. Student Loan Pandemic Relief Measures Prepublication copy, uncorrected proofs 184
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. On March 30, 2021, the federal government expanded these provisions to make federal student loans made through the Federal Family Education Loan Program and not owned by the U.S.
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. SAFETY NET EXPANSIONS Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program FFCRA provided resources to expand federal nutrition assistance programs.
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, though states with higher unemployment rates (Bitler et al., 2020) and less restrictive safety net policies (Hembre, 2021)
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. Other Safety Net Provisions In addition to implementation of pandemic provisions and expansion of traditional safety net programs, such as SNAP, other means-tested programming may have been essential to lowincome families during the pandemic, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
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. The CARES Act provided the CCDBG with 3.5 billion in emergency funding to allow states more flexibility in providing child care subsidies to families (Bedrick & Daily, 2020; Child Care Aware America, 2020; Public Policy Associates, 2021; The Hunt Institute, 2020)
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, which was partially met with $8 billion from the CARES Act. Calls for increased funding reflected already deep-seated health and economic disparities facing tribal, Indigenous, and Native American communities, who never fully recovered from the Great Recession of 2007–2009.
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These trends mask the full influence of federal pandemic provisions on poverty rates before and during the pandemic. CPSP also provides descriptive trends on monthly poverty rates relative to the implementation of expanded UI benefits, EITC receipt, and the monthly distribution of the CTC.
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At the same time, the U.S. families continue to face a child care crunch, with a shortage of workers and average monthly costs for center-based care averaging $1,324 for infants, $1,096 for toddlers ($889 for preschool and $1,141 for family-based day care)
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. The exclusion of immigrants from government-sponsored provisions, with few exceptions, was a cornerstone of the nation's 1997 welfare reform overhaul of the safety net, and it has continued with exclusions from monthly CTC and stimulus payments during the pandemic.
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to 380 percent of the federal poverty line in Iowa, although 30 states allowed for presumptive eligibility for pregnant people. Few states had or have either paid family leave or paid sick day mandates or programs.
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Conclusion 6-3: There is a plethora of research on the positive work and family effects of both federal and state-sponsored paid family leave and paid sick leave programs, with limited negative effects on businesses. Conclusion 6-4: The costs of essential goods have risen since the beginning of the pandemic, suggesting an especially difficult economic recovery for low-income families that struggled prior to the pandemic.
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. Paid sick leave and physical mobility: Evidence from the United States during a pandemic.
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. The effects of paid family leave in California on labor market outcomes.
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. The effect of paid family leave on infant and parental health in the United States.
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. The child tax credit: The impact of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA; PL 117-2)
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. Disenfranchised: How lower income mothers navigated the social safety net during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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. Paid family leave effects on breastfeeding: a quasi-experimental study of US policies.
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. Paid maternity leave and breastfeeding practice before and after California's implementation of the nation's first paid family leave program.
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. Paid family leave and children health outcomes in OECD countries.
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. Child health in elementary school following California's paid family leave program.
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. The impact of paid family leave in the United States on birth outcomes and mortality in the first year of life.
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. Monthly poverty rates among children after the expansion of the child tax credit.
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. The effects of California's paid family leave program on mothers' leave‐taking and subsequent labor market outcomes.
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. Dignity and dreams: What the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)
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. Treasury and IRS announce families of nearly 60 million children receive $15 billion in first payments of expanded and newly Advanceable Child Tax Credit.
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. Initial parent perspectives on the child tax credit advance payments.
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