The expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) included in the bipartisan Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act would help lift nearly half a million kids out of poverty nationally next year and will benefit close to 140,000 kids in New Mexico alone in the first year, according to estimates from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The expanded credit will be especially impactful in rural areas, where it will help 51,000 kids living in rural parts of New Mexico, or nearly 1 in 3 of all rural kids living the state.   

The law would allow the amount of the credit which “phases-in” at lower income levels to be based on the number of children a family has, not just family income, and would expand the refundable portion of the credit. While this expansion does not go as far as the historic overhaul included in the American Rescue Plan, it represents an important step forward in the fight against child poverty and will give millions of families more economic breathing room.

The Democratic Staff of the Joint Economic Committee, led by Chairman Martin Heinrich, has prepared the following estimates of the number of children who would benefit from the CTC expansion in each of New Mexico’s Congressional Districts. These estimates were produced using state-level data provided by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and district-level data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

Information on the methods used to create these estimates can be found here.