The Child Tax Credit, Black Families, and the Cost of Conditional Support

This brief, The Child Tax Credit, Black Families, and the Cost of the Conditional Support, examines how earnings requirements, adult-status restrictions, and caregiver eligibility rules limit access to the Child Tax Credit (CTC).

The brief finds that although the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) permanently increased the maximum CTC to $2,200 per child, it maintained earnings-based restrictions and capped the refundable portion at $1,700 per child. These limitations prevent many families with low earnings from accessing the full benefit, despite the credit’s role in helping households afford food, housing, transportation, childcare, and other essential expenses.

It also highlights how federal tax policy can exclude adults who take responsibility for raising children but do not meet the tax code’s qualifying-child relationship requirements.

This brief is part of The Tax Code and Black Wealth policy brief series examining how the federal tax code builds wealth for some and strips it from others, organized into sub-series that each take up a different part of the code. This brief is the second installment under the sub-series Refundable Tax Credits and Black Economic Security. This series examines those choices systematically.

Read the brief here.