The last year was made somewhat livable through the ample delivery of stimulus check payments, with the pandemic ravaging the economy. Around 66% of the American population lived paycheck to paycheck during this crisis, with people of color and women facing the major brunt of the hardships like disproportionate childcare burdens, and increased unemployment.
Yet, the year was pretty revolutionary, which led to increasing awareness of the challenges that the average lower-income family faces. This helped transform several new policies- one of them being the child tax credit expansion under President Joe Biden.
Important Of The Stimulus Check Payments
A report under the U.S Census Bureau has highlighted that around $1,200 worth of stimulus check payments were distributed during this pandemic- which led to the lowest poverty rate in the country on record- 9.1% in 2020.
This, interestingly, led to the upliftment of around 8.5 million from an utterly impoverished state of existence. Without the stimulus payments, the poverty rate would have exponentially climbed to 12.7%, as estimated by the Census Bureau.
The expanded CTC stimulus check payments, which have been designed to provide parents with a sum of $3,000 to $3,600 per child for this year, should optimally show similar results. Most experts have estimated that this plan will decrease child poverty by around 40%, all the while lifting around 4 million children out of a dire state of poverty.
The supporters of these successes of economic interventions are hoping that this would be enough to provide suitable momentum for the continuation of these policies- along with the implementation of quite a few programs like a guaranteed income.
While most of the policymakers have started negotiating over the newly minted Build Back Better plan of Joe Biden, the rate of poverty has been climbing steadily- leading to calls for another stimulus check.
