Addressing the Long-Term Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Children and Families (2023) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
6 Effects of Economic Policies
6 Effects of Economic Policies
Pages 201-242
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payments, the child tax credit, eviction moratoriums, and student loan relief measures) , and other safety net programs.
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: Signed into law on March 18, 2020, FFCRA appropriated $192 billion in funding for nutrition assistance, paid sick leave, paid family and medical leave, unemployment insurance (UI) , free COVID-19 testing, and Medicaid.
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. The CARES Act further expanded UI benefits with three programs: the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation program provided an additional $600 per week in UI benefits between March and July 2020 (Han et al., 2020)
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At the same time, Holzer and colleagues (2021) also found that early termination of UI benefits increased the share of households who reported difficulty in meeting essential expenses (e.g., material hardship)
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. Overall, research on the effects of UI pandemic provisions suggests positive effects on family well-being, including reduced food and material hardships, attenuation of mental health duress, especially for lower-wage workers.
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For paid sick leave, qualifying workers could receive up to 80 hours of time off at their regular rate of pay for their own quarantine or COVID-19 symptoms or for that of an immediate family member. For paid family leave, qualifying workers could take up to 10 weeks off if they were unable to work because of the need to care for a child whose school or child care facility was closed; these workers received two-thirds of their regular rate of pay (DOL, 2020a)
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Pandemicera paid family leave was limited to caretaking during school closures, and use of the program was significantly less than that of paid sick leave; Goodman (2021) found that only 15 percent of firms with 100–300 employees had at least one employee who used paid family leave.
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payments, the child tax credit, eviction moratoriums, and student loan relief measures. Economic Impact Payments The first stimulus payments were distributed to qualifying individuals and families between April 2020 and March 2021: $1,200 to individuals, $2,400 to married couples, and an additional $500 for each qualifying child.
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. Overall, the evidence suggests that households with fewer resources prior to the pandemic or became short of resources because of the pandemic used stimulus payments for essential goods, which aligns with a long line of scholarship on a similar federal cash transfer program, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC; Romich & Weisner, 2000; Smeeding et al., 2000; Mendenhall et al., 2012; Halpern-Meekin et al., 2015; Sykes et al., 2015)
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Analysis of the CTC's antipoverty effects found that monthly child poverty rates declined from about 16 percent in June 2021 to 12 percent in July 2021 after the first CTC payments. It is estimated that this benefit represented about three million children lifted out of poverty by the CTC, reducing monthly child poverty by an estimated 40 percent (Parolin et al., 2021b)
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This finding suggests that the distribution of direct cash to individuals and families successfully mitigated the potential deleterious consequences of the pandemic, bolstering family income and promoting the ability for families to purchase essential goods and services without the administrative difficulties of onerous applications or ongoing participation requirements inherent to many safety net programs (see Chapter 5 for more discussion on access to coverage)
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However, many of these programs are limited in scope, enrolling from 12 to less than 200 participants, and some use nonexperimental methods. In contrast, Chicago plans to enroll 5,000 adults through a randomized controlled trial, which should provide robust evidence on the utility of universal basic income benefits in attenuating family hardships.
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than other states, suggesting these policies also helped reduce evictions. Other components of the CARES Act also likely helped with housing stability, including stimulus and monthly child tax credit payments and safety net and expansions of unemployment insurance benefits.
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. While the number of filings fell below prepandemic levels during the CDC moratorium, there were about three times as many eviction filings as occurred when the CARES Act and most state moratoriums were in place, suggesting that the CDC moratorium was not as effective as those interventions (Hepburn et al., 2021, 2022)
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. Overall, eviction filings were reduced by an estimated 1.55 million and allowed renters to use financial resources for other essential goods, which reduced food insecurity and mental stress (Hepburn et al., 2021; Jowers et al., 2021)
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While most pandemic provisions were targeted toward families, workers, renters, and small businesses, the CARES Act did provide landlords who had mortgages backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
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. On March 30, 2021, the federal government expanded these provisions to make federal student loans made through the Federal Family Education Loan Program and not owned by the U.S.
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In particular, student loan borrowers eligible for federal student loan pandemic relief, including those in higher risk groups, were able to improve their credit profiles. While some of this improvement may be attributable to other fiscal stimulus and relief measures, according to the authors, the findings indicate an outsized improvement for people eligible for federal student loan pandemic relief relative to those who were not eligible.
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-- which provided direct payments to families with children who lost access to free or reduced-price school meals due to school and child care closures. These payments had a value of about $114 per child per month (U.S.
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, though states with higher unemployment rates (Bitler et al., 2020) and less restrictive safety net policies (Hembre, 2021)
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. Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer Research on the P-EBT program is even more limited than that on SNAP, but it offers promising evidence of the effects of P-EBT in reducing economic hardships, especially food hardship, among low-income children and families.
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. The CARES Act provided the CCDBG with 3.5 billion in emergency funding to allow states more flexibility in providing child care subsidies to families (Bedrick & Daily, 2020; Child Care Aware America, 2020; Public
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Given that states had some latitude in the use of CCDBG CARES Act funding, it will be important for future research to consider the effects of different state approaches in promoting take-up or maintenance of subsidies during the pandemic and how such policies might have affected work and family and child well-being. SUPPORT FOR TRIBAL NATIONS As part of ARP, tribal nations and Indigenous and Native American populations received unprecedented funding from the federal government to address long-standing health equity issues and address the economic effects of the pandemic.
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, which was partially met with $8 billion from the CARES Act. Calls for increased funding reflected already deep-seated health and economic disparities facing tribal, Indigenous, and Native American communities, who never fully recovered from the Great Recession of 2007–2009.
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These trends mask the full influence of federal pandemic provisions on poverty rates before and during the pandemic. CPSP also provides descriptive trends on monthly poverty rates relative to the implementation of expanded UI benefits, EITC receipt, and the monthly distribution of the CTC.
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(Between February and April 2020 the labor force participation rate dipped from 63.3% to 60.1%.) Relatedly, unemployment rates have also improved, including across workers with different levels of education.
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. Unlike cash transfers, safety net programs often have greater administrative requirements by typically requiring recipients to access resources through an agency or caseworker.
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. The exclusion of immigrants from government-sponsored provisions, with few exceptions, was a cornerstone of the nation's 1997 welfare reform overhaul of the safety net, and it has continued with exclusions from monthly CTC and stimulus payments during the pandemic.
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to 380 percent of the federal poverty line in Iowa, although 30 states allowed for presumptive eligibility for pregnant people. Few states had or have either paid family leave or paid sick day mandates or programs.
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Conclusion 6-3: There is a plethora of research on the positive work and family effects of both federal and state-sponsored paid family leave and paid sick leave programs, with limited negative effects on businesses. Conclusion 6-4: The costs of essential goods have risen since the be ginning of the pandemic, suggesting an especially difficult economic recovery for low-income families that struggled prior to the pandemic.
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. The effects of paid family leave in California on labor market outcomes.
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. The impact of paid family leave on the timely vaccination of infants. Vaccine, 39(21)
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(2021) . The child tax credit: The impact of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA; PL 117-2)
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. Disenfranchised: How lower income mothers navigated the social safety net during the COVID-19 pandemic. Socius, 7, 23780231211031690.
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. Paid family leave effects on breastfeeding: A quasi-experimental study of US policies. American Journal of Public Health, 109(1)
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. Paid maternity leave and breastfeeding practice before and after California's implementation of the nation's first paid family leave program. Eco nomics and Human Biology, 16, 45–59.
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. Child health in elementary school following Cali fornia's paid family leave program. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 36(4)
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(2021b) . Monthly poverty rates among chil dren after the expansion of the child tax credit.
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. The effects of California's paid family leave program on mothers' leave‐taking and subsequent labor market outcomes.
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. Dignity and dreams: What the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)
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. Treasury and IRS disburse second month of Advance Child Tax Credit pay ments [Press Release]
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. Understanding the true cost of child care for in fants and toddlers. Center for American Progress, 1–35.
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