The child tax credit helped push a key measure of poverty to its lowest level on record, according to new Census Bureau data Tuesday that signaled just how critical government assistance was to propping Americans up in the second year of the coronavirus pandemic.
Median income remained essentially static in 2021, and the official poverty rate did as well. But the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which adjusts for government assistance like tax credits and stimulus checks, dropped 1.4 percentage points to 7.8%.