Abstract

Excerpted From: Kathryn Menefee and Amy Matsui, “Welfaring” the Child Tax Credit: How Racial and Gender Stereotypes Have Blocked Expansions to the CTC and Undermined its Ability to Reduce Poverty, 22 Pittsburgh Tax Review 43 (Fall, 2024) (144 Footnotes) (Full Document)

From the earliest days of this nation, our economy has relied on the underpaid and undervalued labor of women of color. Black women have historically had some of the highest rates of labor force participation. Black women, Latinas, women of color, and immigrant women are over-represented among workers who do the essential but poorly compensated work that we all rely on--like retail, restaurant, grocery store, and other service sector jobs. Women, and women of color in particular, also make up a disproportionate share of public sector jobs. Additionally, domestic and care work--whether health care, child care, or care for the elderly or disabled-- is overwhelmingly performed by women of color and immigrant women. Despite the value of this work to families, communities, and our economy more broadly, these jobs and the Black and brown women who perform them have consistently been undervalued and underpaid.

This comes at a high price for women and families of color. Due to employment discrimination, historical inequalities, consistent underinvestment in women and communities of color, and a range of other systemic factors, Black women and Latinas face especially high rates of poverty. In 2022, 16.6% of Black women, 16.8% of Latinas, and 32.0% of families headed by a single woman-- disproportionately women of color living in poverty. In comparison, 9.5% of white women and 7.3% of white men lived in poverty in 2022.

Policymakers have consistently used racist and sexist narratives about women of color to portray them--especially single Black women raising children--as undeserving of government support. These narratives falsely portray poverty as a cultural and behavioral choice made by families in poverty, rather than a policy choice made by those in power. From the early twentieth century these narratives have been used to restrict and narrow antipoverty programs, preventing the families most in need from benefiting.

This Essay will explore how these sexist and racist narratives were employed in recent years to defeat attempts to permanently expand the Child Tax Credit (CTC). The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) temporarily expanded the CTC in 2021. This led to a tremendous decrease in poverty, lifting 1.5 million women out of poverty and cutting child poverty nearly in half. However, policymakers allowed the CTC expansion to expire at the end of 2021, dramatically increasing poverty and hardship for women and families. Attempts to restore this extraordinarily successful anti-poverty policy--or enact a more modest expansion--have failed. This Essay argues that this failure can be at least partially attributed to the ways in which policymakers compared the expanded CTC to the pre-1996 welfare system and painted the beneficiaries of the expanded CTC as unwilling to work and undeserving. This Essay concludes that recognizing and refusing to be distracted by these racist and sexist narratives will be key to successfully enacting a permanently expanded CTC.

[. . .]

The success of the ARPA's expanded CTC demonstrated both the feasibility and tremendous anti-poverty impact of providing a fully refundable CTC to families with low incomes. The 2021 CTC expansion drastically reduced poverty and hardship, and helped many families afford the basics and ride out a global recession. This expansion was especially vital to single mothers and mothers of color, who disproportionately experience poverty. But the expanded CTC also gave millions of families across the nation a little “breathing room.” The payments gave families a financial cushion to catch up on bills, put money aside for emergencies, or allow their children to participate in extracurricular activities. Many families felt less stress, and that the government cared about them. However, policymakers used old narratives and stereotypes about women of color--including the welfare queen archetype--to undermine attempts to extend or restore this successful expansion.

While the deployment of “welfare queen” stereotypes undermined efforts to extend or reinstate the ARPA expansions, or to enact more modest temporary improvements, to date, advocates will continue to vigorously pursue opportunities to expand the CTC in ways that benefit families who are currently excluded. Research and history suggest that one path forward is to acknowledge the racist and sexist narratives that are being used to defeat the expanded CTC, urge policymakers and the public to resist these narratives, and instead advance narratives that uplift the dignity and deservingness of women and women of color--and, indeed, of all families.

Kathryn Menefee is Senior Counsel at the National Women's Law Center (NWLC)

Amy Matsui is Senior Director of Income Security at the National Women's Law Center (NWLC).