Evidence from the temporary expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) in 2021 suggests it helped to reduce family poverty, lessen food hardship, and increase families’ financial expenditures on children across race and ethnicity. We review recent evidence on the impacts of the CTC on differences in well-being across race and ethnicity, including differences in access to the tax credit, how families used the tax credit, and the food insecurity and mental health circumstances of those families. We supplement our review of extant research with an analysis of racial income inequality using nationally representative data from the Current Population Survey: we find that the 2021 CTC expansion is associated with lowered Black–white and Hispanic–white income inequality in the bottom half of the income distribution, particularly at the 10th and 25th percentiles.
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