Last year, our work on SNAP and taxes was especially salient in federal debates, highlighting how changes to the Child Tax Credit and SNAP affect low-income and immigrant families. We also brought findings to state and local leaders, including research on how to design local Child Tax Credits. Our work on the Poverty Tracker drew heightened attention as the affordability crisis intensified in New York City. We updated our historical poverty trends series and released a consumer guide on family budget-based measures. We also spotlighted research on young adults in a web series. In the coming year, we will continue to highlight how policies that undermine the safety net increase poverty and inform conversations among stakeholders. Here’s a snapshot of the Center’s work in 2025:
Research Highlights
In 2025, our work on food assistance underscored SNAP’s central role as one of the nation’s most important social programs. We examined the potential poverty impacts of SNAP benefit cuts. During the government shutdown, we estimated that tens of thousands of people in New York State–and over 4 million nationally–would be pushed into poverty if SNAP benefits failed to be delivered in November. Beyond immediate effects, we showed that $1 in SNAP lost to children and families costs our nation anywhere from $14 to $20 over the longer term, due to its critical role in supporting households and the broader economy, and that food insecurity can persist across generations. As vital as this program is, when the federal government signaled it would no longer collect key data, our team filled that gap by developing a tool to predict national food insecurity rates—aiming to provide reliable data to support timely access to SNAP for families facing hard times.
Coming into the 2025 federal tax debate, we mapped how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 re-shaped the tax baseline for children and how to re-tool the Earned Income Tax Credit to support young adults currently left out. We provided the first estimate (with the Center for Migration Studies, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, and the Boston University Institute for Equity in Child Opportunity & Health Development) of how immigrant restrictions to the Child Tax Credit could shut out millions of U.S. citizen and legal permanent resident children. We weighed in on how the new 2025 Child Tax Credit leaves more children behind. We provided custom analysis for states looking to enact or expand family tax credits and identified how state Child Tax Credit design decisions affect their impact. We also launched a new body of work on local tax policy, demonstrating how local Child Tax Credits can reduce child poverty (with Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy).
In 2025, our partnership with Robin Hood on the Poverty Tracker drew heightened attention as the affordability crisis intensified, underscoring challenges New Yorkers have faced for years. In our State of Poverty and Disadvantage report, we found that poverty in New York City rose to 25 percent—surpassing 2022 highs—and half of New Yorkers faced at least one form of disadvantage, despite the moderating role of government programs. We also documented how rising living costs intersected with wages, housing, food affordability, and transportation access. Challenges driven by the racial wealth gap and the pandemic’s uneven recovery continue to place many, including families with children, under persistent economic strain. In 2026, stay tuned for research on the mayor’s affordability initiatives and the governor’s goal of cutting child poverty.
In 2025, we examined U.S. poverty trends with a historical lens, looking at poverty rates from 1967 to 2024 across four different measures. This work showed how policy choices—particularly government taxes and transfers—have played a growing role in reducing poverty over time, and how the way we measure poverty can shape our understanding of progress. Also, amid rising living costs and intensifying debates over how poverty should be defined, we partnered with Boston University’s Institute for Equity in Child Opportunity and Health Development to create a consumer guide on leading family budget measures as a tool for more clearly capturing the income families need to meet basic expenses. And for those interested in measuring the anti-poverty impact of a package of policies, here’s a read on how "'stacking” matters.
In 2025, we elevated young adults as a key policy focus through a research webinar series powered by strong partnerships. Young adults have historically faced high poverty rates and we find that they struggle to keep up with current living standards and are often excluded from the safety net, which largely targets families with children or older adults. Joint research conducted with Young Invincibles highlighted how targeted tax reforms—such as expanding the childless Earned Income Tax Credit—could better support this group. Drawing on the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study in partnership with Princeton University’s Bendheim-Thoman Center for Research on Child and Family Wellbeing and the Columbia Population Research Center, we also examined how young adults are faring financially, what their living arrangements look like, and their patterns of employment, education, and disconnection, poverty, and health and mental health at age 22.
Our featured research in 2025 was funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Freedom Together Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Hilton Foundation, and Robin Hood. We thank them for their support.