Child poverty 2026 | $3,000 fully refundable CTC

This cell asks what the observed SPM child poverty rate would be if the $3,000 fully refundable CTC policy is actually in force for TY2026. Policy uncertainty is removed; macro and measurement uncertainty remain.

The 2021 expanded-CTC anchor prevents over-shrinking toward current-law poverty, while the 2026 macro path and take-up uncertainty keep the interval above the raw simulation lower tail.

The resolver is the Census Bureau first print for the Supplemental Poverty Measure poverty rate among people under age 18 for calendar year 2026. This is not the official poverty measure: SPM resources include taxes, refundable credits, transfers and noncash benefits, and subtract medical, work, and child-care expenses while adjusting thresholds for housing costs.

Base-rate/reference class: without the 2021 expanded credit and stimulus environment, recent child SPM poverty sits around 12.4 to 13.7 percent. I use 13.4 percent as the current-policy outside-view anchor before adding the conditional $3,000 fully refundable CTC.

Time-series prior: I do not extrapolate a simple linear trend because the child SPM series has large policy discontinuities from pandemic stimulus, expanded refundable credits, and their expiration; a persistence prior around the recent non-expanded-CTC level is more defensible.

Policy mechanism: a fully refundable $3,000 CTC would count in SPM tax-credit resources for eligible families and would matter most for children in low-earnings households who receive little or no current-law nonrefundable credit. It should not mechanically recreate the 2021 5.2 percent rate because the 2021 outcome also reflected larger under-age-6 credits, stimulus payments, and pandemic-era safety-net conditions.

Anchor 13.4 percent. Subtract 4.7 percentage points for the $3,000 fully refundable CTC, smaller than the 7.2 point 2021-to-2022 child SPM reversal because this condition excludes stimulus and the $3,600 young-child amount. Point = 13.4 - 4.7 = 8.7. For the 80% interval, combine about 1.3 points of recent annual child-SPM movement, roughly 1.5-2.0 points of policy-effect uncertainty, and macro/SPM modeling risk, giving an asymmetric judgmental interval of 5.7 to 12.0.

Counter-consideration: an outcome near 5.7 percent or lower could happen if wage growth is broad, housing and food burdens ease, and refundable-credit take-up is near-complete. An outcome near 12.0 percent or higher could happen if unemployment rises, rent or medical out-of-pocket costs lift SPM needs, or filing and implementation frictions limit receipt among low-income families.

Review disposition: accepted the critiques to clarify the first-print resolver, identify Table B-2 as the likely target table, state why a simple time-series prior is not used, justify the interval from volatility plus policy-effect uncertainty, and label the 2024 value as overall SPM context. The exact 2027 Census publication URL was not available in the public evidence fetched, so the rule specifies using the first posted Census page or successor table.