Forget Fertility Rates—Here’s What a Baby Bonus Would Mean for Poverty

“I think a baby bonus would be nice. It would be lovely to have one, but a one-time payment in the year of birth is not, I think, a credible pathway to long-term stabilization of family incomes,” said Lyman Stone, director of the Pronatalism Institute at the Institute for Family Studies.

The first Trump administration did oversee a significant expansion of the child tax credit, which was approved as part of his massive 2017 tax cuts legislation. That measure doubled the credit, increased the portion of the credit that is refundable, and raised the earning threshold of the credit’s phaseout. However, under that policy, families need to have an annual earned income of $2,500 to qualify for the full credit; because of this requirement, 25 percent of all children under age 17 were ineligible for the full credit in 2023.

A baby bonus could help adjust for some of the issues with the current child tax credit. Because the credit is received in a lump sum during tax filing season, it benefits families with children born later in the year. For example, the parents of a child born in December 2025 would receive the child tax credit payment only a few months after birth, in early spring of 2026. But the parents of a child born in January 2025 would need to wait more than a year before claiming the credit.