Child Tax Credits and (In)equitable State Policy Design

ABSTRACT

The Child Tax Credit (CTC) is an income support policy that helps to offset the cost of raising children. Though CTC policy has long been implemented at the federal level, an increasing number of states have established their own CTCs in recent years. Crucially, states have taken very different approaches to designing CTC policies. Some states have designed CTCs in ways that promote racial and economic equity (e.g., full refundability, high benefit amounts, reduced administrative burden), while other states have incorporated aspects of CTC policy that are likely to reproduce existing racial and economic inequities (e.g., family caps, paperwork requirements). Drawing on an original policy database of state CTC bills introduced between 2018 and 2024, this study develops an innovative framework for systematically assessing the equitability of CTC policy design. Our descriptive analyses reveal that most states make moderate commitments to equity, prioritizing some aspects of it, but rarely implementing a full spectrum of equity‐enhancing policy design options. Substantively, this research advances knowledge of whether and how states design safety net policies to address racial and economic disparities. Most broadly, this work contributes to the theorization and measurement of equitable policy design.