The Federal Child Tax Credit Allowed Some Parents to Go It Alone

A temporary financial benefit for parents during the pandemic helped low-income families stay in their homes. But it also had the effect of allowing mothers to move on from unwanted partners, a new study shows.

In 2021, Congress increased the Child Tax Credit — from $2,000 to $3,600 per child under the age of 6, and to $3,000 per child from age 6 through 17 — and extended it to families without earnings. Researchers at the University of Michigan studied how the enhanced credit affected about 20,000 people with an average income of $10,000. The extra money, not surprisingly, helped reduce the number and amount of past-due rent or mortgage payments, and allowed more families to stay in their homes.

More surprising: The funds also made it possible for people who had been living with a partner to leave. The researchers used a sample of parents who received federal food assistance and used a specific app to manage those benefits. Among the sample group of 20,000 people, 94 percent were mothers (nationwide, the percentage of food-assistance recipients who are mothers is estimated to be slightly lower, 89 percent).

“It’s a positive outcome if you don’t have to live together after you’ve broken up,” said Natasha Pilkauskas, an associate professor at the University of Michigan who coauthored the study. “It allows people to live in the way they want to be living.”

While the dissolution of partnerships may seem an unexpected result of a program intended to help families, researchers don’t know why some households shed that romantic partner when more money became available, nor whether the ex-partner was the children’s father. The credit’s overall effect on cohabitation isn’t clear — it could also have strengthened some partnerships.

The study is a small window into the effects of the credit, relying on six months of data. And inflation and other factors could have limited the credit’s impact.

For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here.