News Update

California’s poverty rate likely to have worsened in 2021

Even as the Build Back Better bill has run aground in the Senate, leaving the fate of the child tax credit up in the air, California’s poverty rate, already the highest in the nation before Covid-19, is likely to have worsened in 2021, as Cal Matters reports.  

In the latest data, more than a third of Californians continued to live in or near poverty. Nearly half of California children participate in the state’s two biggest assistance programs, CalFresh and CalWORKs. 

The expanded child tax credit has already lifted many children out of poverty, experts say. In California, for example, continuing the benefit would cut child poverty from 20% to 13.7% and bring more than 600,000 kids above the poverty line, according to a recent study by the Urban Institute.


Latest updates: