Our existing maze of family tax benefits — including the CTC, Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC), and head of household (HoH) filing status — has several structural deficiencies that make overhauling the system a prerequisite for any effort to boost support for families with children. The report offers several options for expanding and streamlining family tax benefits to address these issues.
The $600 cash payments provided by the CARES act prevented joblessness from turning into actual income loss for millions of families. It also gave Americans breathing room to wait for better jobs, rather than settling for bad ones out of desperation.
In the article, researchers examines how administrative burdens in waitlist management for subsidized childcare in Massachusetts have led to significant reductions in the number of families awaiting assistance, potentially obscuring the true extent of unmet need.
This report examines how states strategically approached managing and administering the historic influx of COVID-19 relief funds for child care and early childhood systems, focusing on governance structures, funding management systems, and data systems
Differing federal requirements for public benefit applications create significant barriers for applicants and complicate state efforts to integrate services.
A modification of Bolder Advocacy’s ACT!Quick capacity self-assessment tool to incorporate additional equity-centered capacities, engage community authentically, and conduct research in culturally responsive ways.
This blog explains how the Rural Health Transformation Program—established under H.R. 1—will channel $50 billion over five years to states to support rural health care, and outlines how states can apply, qualify, and deploy funds strategically.
Association of State and Territorial Health Offices (ASTHO)
This brief offers a new, anti-racist vision for transforming the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) into a program that actively pushes back against structural racism and advances racial equity and economic prosperity for all families.
The article examines the effects of Arkansas’s Medicaid work requirements, finding substantial coverage losses and no significant increase in employment, compounded by widespread confusion among beneficiaries about the policy.
There were over 25 million Medicaid disenrollments in 2023, but national enrollment remained significantly above pre-pandemic levels at over 56 million, with notable state-level variations and near-recovery of child enrollment.
This report outlines strategies states can adopt to improve access to SNAP, Medicaid, and WIC programs by leveraging policy options, data coordination, and streamlined service delivery.
