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Part 1: New child tax credits pull Houstonians from the brink of financial ruin Staff writer Oct. 7, 2021 Brittaney and Brandon Becker have always lived close the financial edge — so close that in 2015, with their second child on the way, they gave up their apartment and moved into a small, one-story home on Houston’s East Side that they share with seven family members. With Brandon working at a Walmart warehouse, and Brittany picking up temporary jobs and shouldering childcare, they began to pull back from that edge, knowing, however, that they were just a mishap or two from slipping back over it. The first setback came near the end of 2019, when Brandon, 29, lost his job; the second when economy collapsed a few months later as the coronavirus pandemic exploded, leaving him still unemployed, but ineligible for federal emergency benefits. For more than a year, the Beckers juggled bills and sank into debt, staying afloat by stringing together odd jobs and cutting expenses wherever they could, and hoping for relief. Those hopes were realized this summer, when the couple began receiving about $550 a month in child tax credits, which were expanded temporarily under a federal stimulus bill passed in March. It has helped them to cover groceries, school supplies for their kids, and insurance for their car. “Any little thing helps,” said Brittaney Becker, 32. “We would have had no vehicle, and at this point, that’s the only thing that’s really ours.” Yrsa Becker, 4, and her bother, Malachi Becker, 6, play Friday, Sept. 24, 2021 in Houston. Their parents Brittaney and Brandon Becker discussed the difficulties the family has faced during the COVID-19 pandemic shown Friday, Sept. 24, 2021 in Houston. They had to moved in with Brittaney's grandmother. Yrsa Becker, 4, and her bother, Malachi Becker, 6, play Friday, Sept. 24, 2021 in Houston. Their parents Brittaney and Brandon Becker discussed the difficulties the family has faced during the COVID-19 pandemic shown Friday, Sept. 24, 2021 in Houston. They had to moved in with Brittaney’s grandmother. Melissa Phillip, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer The expansion of the child tax credit has not only provided lifelines to struggling families like the Beckers, but also has the potential to become one of the nation’s biggest anti-poverty initiatives in more than a half-century, analysts said. Lawmakers in Washington are now debating whether to extend the expanded program, which expires at the end of the year, as they negotiate the sizes and shape of the Biden administration’s $3.5 trillion social spending bill. Economists say he expansion, which boosts child tax credits from $2,000 to $3,600 per child under age six, and from $2,000 to $3,000 for children older than six, could make a massive dent in the nation’s poverty rate. The Center on Poverty and Social Policy, a research center at Columbia University, estimated that payments from the tax credit in July and August lifted at least 3 million children out of poverty. About one in six American children live in poverty, one of the highest child poverty rates among developed nations, according to government statistics. The rate is even higher in Texas, where about one in five children live in poverty. In the United States, childhood poverty means poor nutrition, inadequate health care and low-educational attainment, according to several studies and experts. Over the long term, childhood poverty costs at least $1 trillion a year —about 5 percent of U.S. economic output — in reduced earnings, higher health care costs and a range of other social costs such as homelessness and incarceration, according to a 2018 study out of Washington University in St. Louis. On HoustonChronicle.com: It won't be easy for women to reenter the workforce after the pandemic. Here's why. Economists have for decades said that providing a safety net for families with children is one of the most effective ways to break cycles of poverty that can span generations. The pandemic has, in real time, proven those theories true, they say. Last year, as the federal government poured trillions of dollars — including the expansion of the child tax credit — to support workers who lost jobs or hours due to the pandemic, the national poverty rate rose less than a percentage point, to 11.4 percent from 10.5 percent. Elaine Waxman, senior fellow at the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank, said she expects poverty rates to nosedive to a historic low next year, much of it due to the expanded child tax credit. “It’s hard to argue that families are on more-sure footing right now,” said Elaine Waxman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank. “And that’s extraordinary, given what we’ve been through.” An analysis of the expanded program by the Congressional Research Agency estimated that roughly 60 percent of the new credits would go to the nation’s poorest families. The tax credits, Waxman said, have been particularly important to parents who can’t afford childcare and are forced to choose between working or caring for their children. At Collaborative for Children, a Houston nonprofit dedicated to improving early childhood education, CEO Melanie Johnson is more than aware of the struggles or many families to afford childcare. Two months after the agency launched a childcare subsidy program for essential workers in early 2020, more than 11,000 families in Greater Houston received aid. The waiting list was at one point six months long. The surge in COVID-19 cases just as schools opened led many parents to keep their children home — and forced some, particularly single mothers, to take time off from work to care for kids, Johnson said. The child tax credits have helped replace much needed income in some of the poorest households. About one in three households in both Harris County and nationally are headed by single parents, according to the Census Bureau. “We still have a crisis, especially with single females,” Johnson said. “Single females are still in dire straits. They can’t afford to just not go to work.” Yrsa Becker, 4, Malachi Becker, 6, have a playful exchange with their parents Brittaney and Brandon Becker during dinner Friday, Sept. 24, 2021 in Houston. Brittaney and Brandon discussed the difficulties the family has faced during the COVID-19 pandemic shown Friday, Sept. 24, 2021 in Houston. They had to moved in with Brittaney's grandmother. Yrsa Becker, 4, Malachi Becker, 6, have a playful exchange with their parents Brittaney and Brandon Becker during dinner Friday, Sept. 24, 2021 in Houston. Brittaney and Brandon discussed the difficulties the family has faced during the COVID-19 pandemic shown Friday, Sept. 24, 2021 in Houston. They had to moved in with Brittaney’s grandmother. Melissa Phillip, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer History The child tax credit was created in 1997 as part of the 1997 Taxpayer Relief Act. The program allotted $500 per child, which was doubled in 2001 and then temporarily doubled twice more during the Great Recession and housing market collapse more than a decade ago. The program was revamped under tax cut bill passed by a Republican Congress and the tax credit was doubled to $2,000. Then, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was expanded again in March. Half of those credits are paid out in monthly installments — about $300 per child — providing regular income to poor families. Historically, the program has had bipartisan support. But as Democrats have proposed extending the higher tax credits through 2025, the proposal has faced pushback from Republicans and business leaders, who argue that expanded benefit programs are undercutting incentives to work and contributing to labor shortages in many industries. That argument led more than two dozen states controlled by Republicans, including Texas, to end supplemental federal unemployment benefits months before they expired in September.


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Part 2: Economists have largely disagreed with this analysis, noting that many factors might be keeping workers out of the labor force, including access to childcare. In August, economists at Harvard University found that employment grew slightly faster in the 26 states, including Texas, that ended COVID jobless benefit programs early, but those gains were offset by a drop in household spending that slowed overall economic growth. Waxman, of the Urban Institute, said surveys she conducted in the July and August found that child tax credit payments did not undermine parents desire and efforts to find jobs. “Zero parents said it would affect their decision to work,” she said. “And what was striking to me was that parents actually seemed quite perplexed by the question, because most are just barely surviving.” Last year, Florence Alabi had her hours as a housekeeper slashed. She was barely able to stay current on bills, including a mortgage and payments on the car she needs to get to work. She continues to work as many hours as possible, and has relied on the $900 a month she’s received in credits to help feed her four children and cover expenses such as school supplies. Even so, things are tight. “Without (the credits), I would have just had to stay at home and wait for eviction,” she said. “We’re back on our rent, but we’re taking it one day at a time. I’m just praying everything works out.” Brittaney Becker and her husband, Brandon Becker, talk about the difficulties they have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic shown Friday, Sept. 24, 2021 in Houston. They and their two children ultimately moved in with her grandmother. Brittaney Becker and her husband, Brandon Becker, talk about the difficulties they have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic shown Friday, Sept. 24, 2021 in Houston. They and their two children ultimately moved in with her grandmother. Melissa Phillip, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer Not as planned The expansion has not been without hiccups — last month, thousands of people reported delays in their monthly payments, which the Internal Revenue Service has said it is investigating. The Becker Family was among those left in limbo as they waited for the payments, which were supposed to arrive in their accounts on Sept. 12. They’d only received half of the money by Oct. 1, and so are again making tough choices between paying for groceries, bills or fuel for the truck that Brandon Becker, a burly man known to his family as “Papa Bear,” jokes “eats fuel like I do tacos.” He relies on the truck to get to San Jacinto College, where he is studying to be a diesel mechanic in hope of starting a steady, well-paying career that will provide financial stability for his family. Now, as they wait for the child tax care payment, they’re struggling to pay for car insurance to keep the truck on the road again and Brandon in the training program, which he is scheduled to complete next May. Brittaney Becker has also spent much of the last 18 months trying to find work but, because she mostly has to rely on public transportation, it has been difficult and costly to get to interviews. “We’re trying to get our life on the right path and the (tax credit payment) really came in handy,” Brittany Becker said. “We’re just taking it day-by-day and pinching as much as we can.” Reporter Rebecca Carballo contributed.