Parents are often most economically vulnerable when their children are young and dependent on outside childcare or in need of a stay-at-home parent. The decision to have a child is a difficult one, and it comes with high costs. In light of decreasing birth rates, high costs that new parents face are a major problem.

We propose giving parents the option to pull up to $30,000 of future child tax credit (CTC) funds forward into as few as two years. This proposal would help parents cope with the high costs of caring for children in their first years of life, making the decision to have a family more economically viable. Additionally, this reform would not increase the cost of the CTC relative to current expenditure. Allocating CTC funds in this way would afford parents greater financial support during costly years of child-rearing.