New Estimates of the Number of United States Citizen and Legal Permanent Resident Children Who May Lose Eligibility for the Child Tax Credit

Published by the Center for Migration Studies in partnership with the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, and Boston University Institute for Equity in Child Opportunity & Healthy Development.

This fact sheet provides new estimates of the number of American citizen and legal permanent resident children who could lose eligibility for the federal Child Tax Credit if proposals currently considered in debates about tax policy reform in the United States were implemented. Currently, children with Social Security Numbers (SSNs), the vast majority of whom are American citizens or legal permanent residents, are eligible for the Child Tax Credit, even if their parents lack an SSN. But legislators working on reforms and extensions to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) have proposed restricting eligibility by requiring these children’s parents or guardians to have an SSN as well. If enacted, such changes to the law would take away eligibility from millions of citizen and legal permanent resident children in the United States. This fact sheet provides estimates of the size of the child population at risk of losing eligibility for the Child Tax Credit.

Results are presented for the most affected states and congressional districts (in terms of number of children affected). Results for all states and congressional districts are included in accompanying data tables (available here). Estimates in this fact sheet and the accompanying data tables use the 2022 1-year American Community Survey; congressional districts results reflect the 119th congressional district map. See Appendix for more detailed methodology.  

Results

We estimate that over 4.5 million citizen and legal permanent resident children with SSNs would become ineligible for the CTC under a policy change that would prohibit parents without SSNs from claiming the credit for their children on their taxes, even if the children have an SSN. These U.S. citizen and permanent resident children are currently eligible for the CTC. As shown in Table 1, the five states with the greatest estimated number of children who would be affected by such a policy change in CTC eligibility are: California (estimated population of affected children: 910,000), Texas (875,000), Florida (247,000), New York (226,000), and Illinois (196,000). The data tables accompanying this fact sheet (available here) include results for all states.

Table 2 presents the ten congressional districts with the greatest estimated number of children who would be affected by the same policy change. These districts are all found in Texas, Arizona, and California. The data tables accompanying this fact sheet (available here) include results for all congressional districts where the number of estimated children at risk of losing eligibility is over 15,000.

Discussion

Programs that help reduce child poverty such as the Child Tax Credit have important beneficial effects on children, including the U.S. children that would lose eligibility if their parents were required to have SSNs to claim the CTC. Beyond their anti-poverty effects, anti-poverty tax credit programs are associated with lower housing and food insecurity, improved health and educational outcomes during childhood, as well as long-term effects on adult educational attainment, employment, income, and health (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2019). These benefits accrue not only to the U.S. citizen children and their families that directly receive the credits, but also to local communities and states. For instance, the additional income generated by anti-poverty programs such as the CTC may result in increased local and state economic activity. These programs also reinforce children and families’ connection to the U.S. fiscal system, and promote upward social mobility and a sense of full citizenship (Sykes et al., 2015; Parolin et al., 2023; Hammond & Orr, 2021).

Suggested Citation

Lisiecki, M., Wilson, D., Acevedo-Garcia, D., Collyer, S., Curran, M., Hughes, J., Sifre, E., & Wimer, C. (2025). New estimates of the number of the United States citizen and legal permanent resident children who may lose eligibility for the Child Tax Credit. Center for Migration Studies. https://cmsny.org/publications/number-of-children-who-may-lose-eligibility-for-the-child-tax-credit

Acknowledgements 

Center on Poverty and Social Policy researchers benefited from support through the Annie E. Casey Foundation and The Freedom Together Foundation. 

The findings and conclusions presented in this report are those of the authors alone, however, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the foundations or others acknowledged here. 

Appendix. Methodology

To produce the estimates presented in this fact sheet, we first imputed whether individuals in the 2022 1-year American Community Survey had Social Security Numbers (SSNs) using estimates of the U.S. undocumented population prepared by the Center for Migration studies. For a complete description of CMS’s estimation methodology, see Warren (2014).

We then estimated the CTC that children and their families are eligible for based on their family’s reported income and the composition of their family’s tax units. Note that under current law, children without SSNs are not eligible for the CTC and therefore children estimated to likely lack an SSN in the data were excluded from the eligible sample. The remaining children are assumed to have an SSN, so a parent or guardian can claim the CTC on their behalf if they provided financial support, regardless of whether the parent or guardian has a SSN. We then identified all eligible children whose parents or guardians could potentially receive a CTC on their behalf, but who would lose this eligibility under a new policy requiring tax filers to have an SSN. 

Finally, the estimates at the congressional district level presented in this fact sheet were calculated based on the correspondence between Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs), which are identifiable in the ACS, and congressional districts. The crosswalk between these geographies was retrieved from Geocorr 2022: Geographic Correspondence Engine, developed by the Missouri Census Data Center.

Many congressional districts consist of multiple PUMAs. When a PUMA was entirely contained within a congressional district, all children affected by the policy change in that PUMA were included in the calculation of the number of affected children for that district. For PUMAs with boundaries spanning multiple congressional districts, we allocated the children affected by the policy to each district proportionally, based on the share of the PUMA’s population within each district.

References 

Hammond S, Orr R. (2021) Measuring the Child Tax Credit’s Economic and Community Impact. Washington, DC: Niskanen Center; August. https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Measuring-the-Child-Tax-Credits-Economic-and-Community-Impact.pdf.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2019. A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25246.

Parolin, Z., Ananat, E., Collyer, S., Curran, M., & Wimer, C. (2023). The Effects of the Monthly and Lump-Sum Child Tax Credit Payments on Food and Housing Hardship. AEA papers and proceedings, 113, 406–412. https://doi.org/10.1257/pandp.20231088.

Sykes, J., Križ, K., Edin, K., & Halpern-Meekin, S. (2015). Dignity and Dreams: What the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) Means to Low-Income Families. American Sociological Review, 80(2), 243-267. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122414551552.

Warren, R. 2014. Democratizing Data about Unauthorized Residents in the United States: Estimates and Public-Use Data, 2010 to 2013.” Journal on Migration and Human Security 2(4):305–28. https://doi.org/10.1177/233150241400200403.