Child poverty and tax credit changes: a note for the Work and Pensions Select Committee

Previous IFS work has confirmed the intuition that, for a given level of expenditure, increasing the per-child element of the child tax credit will have a larger direct impact on poverty than increasing the family element or increasing child benefit. In a recent note, we built on this by estimating the number of children that would be taken out of poverty by five hypothetical policy reforms:

• increases in the per-child element of the child tax credit of 3/week.
• increasing all adult allowances in income support by 2.50 a week.
• introducing a new premium into the child tax credit which is paid to families with three or more children. The premium would be worth 845 a year to all families with three or more children with joint annual incomes below 50,000.
• Increasing the working tax credit for all families with children by 11.75 a week.