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All children deserve to live happy, fulfilling lives. This means that all children should have their immediate health and safety needs met, and no child should be denied the chance for a bright future based on their family’s hardship.

Our country is failing our children in this regard. Child poverty is on the rise in the United States as households with children struggle with the high cost of food, rent, and other household expenses. The tax code offers one of the strongest tools for improving the lives of children by providing credits, deductions, and asset-building tools that reduce child poverty and promote family economic mobility.

According to First Focus on Children’s annual budget analysis, the Child Tax Credit, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) are among the top 20 programs contributing to children’s spending in the federal budget. In FY 2022, when tax filers had access to the EITC and a fully refundable CTC and CDCTC, mandatory spending for the three credits accounted for nearly 28% of the share of federal investments in children.

In 2023, the refundable portion of the Child Tax Credit kept 1.34 million children out of poverty. This impact is significant but would have been even greater if the improvements made to the CTC in 2021 under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) were still in place. Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy found that if the ARPA improvements had continued in 2023, an additional 3.6 million children would have been spared poverty.

Currently, one-quarter of children in the United States live in families that don’t earn enough to qualify for the full $2,000 Child Tax Credit. Significant percentages of these children live in large families or rural communities. Children of color are also disproportionately left out, as are babies, whose mothers are more likely to be in and out of the workforce because of complications in pregnancy, labor and delivery, postpartum health issues, lack of paid family medical leave, and other reasons. Other examples of children left behind are those whose parents have passed away or who are victims of natural disasters.

The majority of adults caring for children work outside the home but many still struggle to make ends meet because wages for low-wage workers have not kept up with inflation. Parents and caregivers need reliable income to provide nutritious food, health care, diapers, school supplies, and other resources that improve their children’s development and achievement. The high cost of raising young children makes it more likely that families with babies will slide into poverty. The cost of full-time, center-based care for infants — which exceeds the price of in-state college tuition in most states — means that families can spend more than 10% of their income on child care alone. The high cost of raising kids continues through childhood: On average it costs more than $300,000 to raise one child from birth to age 18 (not including college).

Enhancing tax credits such as the Child Tax Credit, Earned Income Tax Credit, and Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit not only helps individual children and their families, but also benefits our country as a whole.

For example, improving the Child Tax Credit can strengthen local economies — the Niskanen Center found that extending the expanded Child Tax Credit for just one year would support the equivalent of 500,000 private-sector jobs.

The United States tax code is the government’s primary means of raising revenue to support a wide range of government functions, including the operation of numerous programs and services that benefit children and families throughout the country and abroad. Historically, the individual income tax has generated the most revenue. According to the Congressional Research Service, in FY 2021 the individual income tax contributed $2.0 trillion, or 50.5% of the federal government’s revenue. The corporate income tax contributed notably less, generating $212 billion in FY 2021, or 9.2% of total revenue.

Investing in children is one of the most cost-effective and impactful ways to shore up the nation’s future. Research shows that investments in children yield immense returns, not just for their lives but for the nation as a whole. Yet, our 2024 Children’s Budget finds that the share of U.S. federal spending on children fell to 8.87% in FY 2024, representing the third straight year of decline. Both mandatory and discretionary spending for children fell in FY 2024 as a share of the federal budget. Adjusted for inflation, U.S. investment in children declined nearly 6% from FY 2023. Our Babies in the Budget 2024 analysis shows that the federal share of spending on infants and toddlers is an alarmingly low 1.52%. This disinvestment in children isn’t just about numbers — it has realworld consequences for millions of young people. As federal support dwindles, children face increased risk to their health, well-being and future. Early in the 119th Congress, harmful cuts and policy changes have already been proposed to reduce our deficit and support tax reforms skewed toward the ultra-wealthy.

An approach to build a fairer tax code that includes revenue raisers could help to address our nation’s racial, gender, and economic inequities, which disproportionately affect children, and finance greater investment in our children and their families. In a report released in January 2025, the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Analysis found that extending the expiring individual and estate tax provisions of the 2017 tax law would cost $4.2 trillion between 2026 and 2035, and the largest tax cuts would go to the highest-income families. More recently, an April 3, 2025, Joint Committee on Taxation analysis estimates the cost of extending the 2017 tax law at $5.5 trillion over ten years. This is money that research shows would be better spent on children. As lawmakers debate tax policy, they should raise more revenue from the wealthiest people and corporations to help support much-needed investments in our children, offset the extension or expansion of tax cuts under consideration, improve our fiscal outlook, and strengthen our economy. 

The Opportunity

Reforming tax policies to better support families and children is critical to building a more equitable society. Through reforms outlined below, these tax credits, deductions, savings accounts and other opportunities in the tax code would provide financial stability for families and lift millions of children out of poverty. First Focus on Children supports comprehensive tax reform. The policy recommendations below are divided into three sections: (1) Strengthen Tax Credits and Deductions, (2) Savings Accounts and Asset Building, and (3) Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Funding and Customer Services. These recommended tax strategies should not replace existing programs that provide direct assistance to support children’s health and well-being, and we would be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge that tax deductions and savings accounts typically favor high-income families, while refundable tax credits and investments in direct-support programs better meet the needs of low-income families. We also acknowledge the provisions included in this paper are not an exhaustive list of the parts of the tax code that benefit children and their families. This paper mostly focuses on tax policies that go directly to households with children, which have the largest impact on improving the lives of lower-income children.

Reforms to the tax code are a powerful way to develop a comprehensive policy approach to provide the best outcomes for children and families, especially those who face the biggest barriers to economic mobility. As Congress heads toward intense debates around extending provisions of the 2017 tax law, lawmakers must prioritize reforms that help struggling families meet basic living expenses, reduce child poverty, and promote economic mobility. The Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit have been shown to deliver a tremendous return on investment, helping improve near- and long-term outcomes for children and making our country stronger.

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The 2024 Children’s Budget finds that the share of U.S. federal spending on children fell to 8.87% in Fiscal Year 2024, representing the third straight year of decline. Both mandatory and discretionary spending for children fell in FY 2024 as a share of the federal budget.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, more U.S. lawmakers prioritized children in their funding decisions, pushing the share of federal spending on children to a record high of nearly 12% in FY 2021. Since then, Congress has clawed back most of these wins for children, resulting in a steady three-year decline in both total dollars and share of spending allocated to kids in the federal budget.

In FY 2024, lawmakers spent $18.396 billion less on children than in FY 2023, amounting to an inflation-adjusted decline of 5.59%— although this figure represents an improvement over the double-digit declines of FY 2022 and FY 2023. Investments in children’s programs abroad account for a mere 0.09% of the total federal budget. This continued systematic disinvestment in the nation’s children has visibly damaged their health and well-being. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, child poverty more than doubled in 2022 compared to 2021, with the rate of children living in poverty increasing from 5.2% to 12.4% and rose to 13.7% in 2023. The U.S. infant mortality rate in 2022, which already was much higher than in other wealthy nations, increased for the first time in two decades. Millions of children are losing health care. Nearly 5 million children have lost access to Medicaid through the unwinding process. Global vaccination rates for children have fallen to 2008 levels, with long-forgotten diseases including measles and polio surging in the United States for the first time in decades.

This current disinvestment is especially alarming in comparison to funding levels during the coronavirus pandemic when the federal government increased investments in children and proved a better future for children was possible.

The COVID-19 public health emergency spurred a surge of investment in children with historic temporary improvements to programs including the Child Tax Credit (CTC), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), education and child care stabilization, as well as other timely measures such as economic impact payments. In FY 2022 alone, economic impact payments ended, the expansion of the Child Care and Development Block Grant was phased out, and improvements to the Child Tax Credit expired. In FY 2023 and 2024, lawmakers eliminated multiple large investments in childhood nutrition.

Rapid reductions in pandemic-era programs continued to drive the decline in funding for children in FY 2024. The elimination of Pandemic EBT and the expiration of emergency allotments in SNAP represented the two largest drivers, with those programs alone reducing funding for children by $33.609 billon. Other notable declines include the discretionary portion of the Education Stabilization Fund, the Emergency Connectivity Fund, and the Child and Adult Care Food Program. The end of these pandemic-related investments reduced the share of the federal budget going to children to just 8.87% in FY 2024 – more than a quarter off the FY 2021 high of 11.98%.

Program Spotlight

SNAP, previously known as food stamps, provides the first line of defense against childhood food insecurity. SNAP provides monthly benefits on an electronic benefits transfer (EBT) card which can only be used to purchase food items at grocery stores and other participating vendors. Nearly 14 million children rely on SNAP for access to nutritious foods and more than half of all SNAP recipients are children.

Research has shown that increased investments in FY 2022 (via updates to the Thrifty Food Plan) reduced child poverty by 8.6% in the fourth quarter of 2021, and reduced the severity of poverty for an estimated 6.2 million children. Unfortunately, several proposals by policymakers aim to end these routine updates, which could cause SNAP benefits to fall behind scientific nutrition recommendations and reduce their purchasing power.

International Spending on Children

International spending on children makes up a dramatically smaller share of the federal budget, with total spending equaling approximately 1/100th of domestic spending on kids. Spending on international children’s programs accounts for a mere 0.09% of the total federal budget and only 10.16% of spending internationally in FY 2024.

Overview of the President’s FY 2025

Budget President Biden’s budget for FY 2025 offers a glimmer of hope for a better future for kids, increasing spending on children by nearly $200 billion. By far the largest driver of this increase would be the expanded refundability of the Child Tax Credit, which would provide an additional $186 billion to families with kids, especially those who currently receive less than the full credit or no credit at all because their parents’ income is too low. This increase —totaling 648% —along with other key investments would raise the share of federal spending on kids to 11.11%, a large improvement but still below the investment reached by the pandemic policy response.

Key Takeaways for Children’s Budget 2024

• FY 2024 marked the third straight year that overall spending on children and the share of federal spending on children declined, falling from a high of 11.98% all the way down to 8.87%—meaning children lost more than a quarter of their share of federal funding over this period.
• Children fell even further behind when accounting for inflation—for the third straight year spending on children failed to keep up with inflation.
• The expiration of nutrition program expansions during the pandemic –including SNAP emergency allotments and Pandemic EBT—were the main drivers of the decline in children’s funding in FY 2024.
• Education funding has increased dramatically from FY 2020 to FY 2024. However, this is entirely the result of temporary Education Stabilization Funds which will phase out, withdrawing needed support for public schools, over the next few years. Without this temporary funding, spending on children’s education would have remained roughly flat since FY 2020.
• Investments in children’s health programs represent a bright spot in the Federal Budget, with the share of federal spending increasing by nearly a third from FY 2020 to FY 2024.
• The President’s Budget Request for FY 2025 would increase spending on children by 26.57% adjusted for inflation. By far the largest driver of this increase would be a $186 billion dollar increase in the Child Tax Credit.

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Findings

Our interviews confirm that leaders in national policymaking and advocacy roles see First Focus on Children as a prominent voice for children. Other key findings include:

• Because a wide range of issues matter for children, leaders cite a wide range of relevant advocacy organizations, but only a few consistently
• Leaders identify key attributes that differentiate First Focus on Children from other advocacy groups
• Despite contemporary political dysfunction, leaders identify a wide range of issues affecting children that are currently on the agenda in Washington
• Leaders say Washington is also failing to focus on urgent issues that matter to children
• First Focus on Children can strengthen its leadership role in the child advocacy space
• There is potential over the long run for substantial federal policy gains on critical children’s issues

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