During its run from July to December last year, the Child Tax Credit allotment was bread-and-butter for countless American households — and maybe literally so, in places such as West Virginia.
“Well, that was one of the more compelling statistics for me,” Leah Hamilton said Tuesday night in Morgantown.
Hamilton, a researcher at Appalachian State University who came up as a social worker serving foster families, is one of the principal authors of a study that broke down the data for the sometimes contentious program not renewed by Washington lawmakers at the end of 2021.
For the families that qualified, the credit provided $3,600 for every child in the household under the age of six — and $3,000 for every child between the ages of six and 17.
The elected officials who didn’t like the idea worried that the monthly payments would discourage heads of households from pursuing employment, either by quitting their jobs or not bothering to look at all, even.
One of the credit’s chief detractors for fears of the above, was U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., in fact.
What Hamilton and her colleagues at Appalachian State and Washington University in St. Louis discovered, though, that families apparently began working smarter for their children, precisely because of that boost of dollars.
Especially, she said, in West Virginia, where families that responded to her group’s surveys said they spent more than half of their monthly allotment — 51.8%, to be exact — on buying more nutritious food for their children.
Food insecurity, which means not having enough to sustain one’s self nutritionally, is an overriding problem here.
“The allotment was literally putting food on the table,” she said.
Visit https://source.wustl.edu/2022/04/child-tax-credit-reduced-usage-of-high-cost-financial-services/ for the full national report.
Meanwhile, Hamilton, who toured West Virginia’s northern panhandle Monday and is slated to be in the state capital of Charleston today, is here to explain some of the numbers, she said — not to pitch the credit.
Her visit, though, was arranged by the owner of a consulting firm who is very much in favor of the credit coming back, if those above-mentioned lawmakers can negotiate that into being.
“We want to educate people,” Tom Susman said. “We want to dispel some myths. We want to educate people.”
Susman is president of TSG Consulting LLC, which provides lobbying, public relations and strategic planning services for a number of causes and clients across West Virginia.
He was appointed in 2001 by then-Gov. Bob Wise to direct the state Public Employees Insurance Agency and held other administrative and cabinet posts during his tenure. Before that, he was elected to the state House of Delegates, serving from 1987 to 1992.
“A lot of our clients work in rural health,” he said. “This credit is about everyone’s quality of life.”
Other numbers
More than 39% of West Virginia’s reporting families used their allotment to buy better clothes for their kids, Hamilton said.
Outstanding debts were paid down by 43% of households and another 20% simply banked the money for a rainy day fund, which is critical, Hamilton said, in the event an unexpected crisis such as a sudden car repair.
More than 40% of respondents said they stopped pawning items in order to get by, according to the survey.
Hamilton spoke in a meeting room at the Morgantown Marriott at Waterfront Place, a relatively prosperous area in a city and a county (Monongalia) which, economically, are faring better than their neighbors in the Mountain State.
But like those tax credit dollars, that word, “relative,” goes a long way here, Halle Stewart said.
Stewart, who took in the talk, is a Hurricane native readying to graduate in May with a master’s in social work.
She wasn’t surprised by the trend of intelligent spending by her Mountain State neighbors, she said.
“West Virginians have always been frugal,” she said, “because we have to be.”
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