Lessons from the COVID-era Welfare Expansion

The Science of Politics

COVID brought expansions of social welfare programs and increased flexibility. But many of the changes expired. Now Congress is considering a bit of a revival of the child tax credit expansion, but recipients of traditional welfare programs won’t see equivalent gains. Did policymakers learn the right lessons from the successes and failures of COVID-era expansions? Carolyn Barnes finds that remote appointments helped recipients but that some program changes confused them. She says we’re back to a period of retrenchment but administrators are trying to adapt when they have incentives to do so. Mariely Lopez-Santana finds that support for the child tax credit expansion was not as high as for other programs because families were not perceived as that deserving. Even recipients were not converted to program advocates.