Search reports, ask a question, or jump to a page.
The problem
Intervention: 2021 temporary expansion of the Child Tax Credit with advanced monthly payments of up to $300 per child under age 6 and $250 per child ages 6-17, followed by lump-sum distribution of remaining benefits
Who it was tested with: 1,028 children ages 0-17 from the 2020-2021 waves of the Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, stratified by income level and race/ethnicity.
Children or communities are compared with a group that did not receive the intervention, or followed over years. This is the design that best separates what the intervention did from everything else that changed.
"We used individual fixed-effects models to estimate within-person changes in outcomes, comparing pre- and postexpansion periods while adjusting for time-invariant confounders. The 2021 PSID wave (November 2021-June 2022) included three CTC phases: 1) advanced monthly payments (November-December 2021), 2) expired monthly payments (January-April 2022), and 3) following the distribution of remaining lump sum (May-June 2022). Analyses were stratified by these phases to capture potential disparate impacts." This quasi-experimental longitudinal design with stratified analysis captures natural variation in benefit timing and distribution, allowing causal inference about payment frequency and amount effects on child behavioral health.
Study was limited to data from November 2021-June 2022, capturing only short-term effects during the program's final phases. The sample size of 1,028 children may not represent all US demographics. Individual fixed-effects models control for time-invariant confounders but cannot fully account for time-varying factors or other concurrent policy changes.
Across countries and designs
4 studies · 1 country
