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The 3^rd monthly payment of the extended Child Tax Credit is landing in bank accounts on Wednesday. It will provide an influx of cash to millions of families at a time when most other major stimulus programs for US households have ended. Parents of about 60 million children will receive direct deposit payments on 15^th September. However, some could receive the checks through the mail anywhere from a few days to a week later. Parents of eligible children under 6 will receive $300 per child and parents of children above 6 (under 17) will receive $250 per child. The September 15 payment marks the halfway point of the direct cash assistance, with only 3 monthly payments remaining under the plan signed into law by President Joe Biden through the American Rescue Plan.

Some Democratic legislators are currently working on an extension of the enhanced Child Tax Credit (CTC) through 2025. Meanwhile, anti-poverty advocates say the CTC has helped families weather the ongoing effects of the pandemic. The co-chair of the Economic Security Project, Natalie Foster said, “The bills come monthly, and so should the checks. We know that these first two checks have really impacted families in a meaningful way”. The Senate Joint Economic Committee issued an analysis report of Census data. It says the share of households with children that sometimes or often didn’t have enough to eat dropped to 8.4% from 11% after the first check arrived. Food and educational expenses ranked among the top uses of the checks, with 7 in 10 families putting the funds toward goods, services, or paying down debt, the JEC report found.

On Wednesday, at least 400 economists including Nobel laureate Peter Diamond of MIT, renowned inequality experts Gabriel Zucman, and Emmanuel Saez of the University of California Berkeley sent a letter to legislators. They urged Congress to make the enhanced CTC a permanent feature of the tax code. They wrote, “A permanently expanded CTC would yield tremendous immediate and long-term benefits for children and their families and would be unlikely to meaningfully reduce employment”. Point to be noted that federal pandemic unemployment benefits ended on Labor Day for 9.1 million people. It clearly indicates that families struggling with joblessness may be more reliant on the CTC to make ends meet. The 3^rd payment date is Wednesday, September 15, with the IRS sending most of the checks via direct deposit.