![]() (See Figure 1.) Food hardship among adults with children also fell after the federal government began issuing monthly payments of the expanded Child Tax Credit on July 15, 2021, along with improvements in food assistance. Hardship rates fell especially fast after the enactment of the American Rescue Plan Act on March 11, 2021, which included $1,400 payments for most Americans as well as other assistance to struggling households. Key hardship indicators showed strong improvement during early 2021, aided by job growth and government benefits. Hardship in 20 would have been far worse without extraordinary steps taken by the federal government, states, and localities to respond to the pandemic and its economic fallout. In early 2022, some 3 million fewer people are employed than before the pandemic, though steady progress has been made, including in recent months. Nonetheless, considerable unmet need remained near the end of 2021, with 20 million households reporting having too little to eat in the past seven days and 10 million households behind on rent. Improving employment and substantial relief measures helped reduce the very high levels of hardship seen in the summer of 2020. While employment began to rebound within a few months, unemployment remained high throughout 2020. In the early months of the crisis, tens of millions of people lost their jobs. The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic fallout caused significant hardship. The Census Bureau will continue to release Household Pulse data on a monthly basis, and CBPP will continue to analyze and write about the effects of pandemic-relief measures, including the important role of government policies in reducing hardship and poverty. With the end of bi-weekly Pulse data releases in October 2021, this tracker will no longer be updated. CBPP and others used this data to assess hardship and the impact of relief measures. At the end of 2021, the Census Bureau had released data from 39 Pulse surveys on household well-being. ![]() In April 2020, the Census Bureau began the Household Pulse Survey to collect nearly real-time data on how families were faring during this unprecedented crisis.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |