Virtual event: Family benefits in America: 2024 report card

On October 14, 2025, The Niskanen Center hosted a virtual event to discuss our report, Family Benefits in America: 2024 Report Card. The report examines how traditional social assistance programs (TANF, SNAP) and refundable tax credits (federal and state CTCs and EITCs) interact to boost family incomes and encourage — or discourage — upward mobility. The webinar provided us an opportunity to present an overview of our findings; share a state-by-state breakdown of total benefit levels and implicit marginal taxes rates that families face as their earnings increase; and discuss key takeaways for families, policymakers, and advocates. 

This discussion highlights several important policy implications for state and federal policymakers, including:

• The need for state policymakers to think about TANF benefit levels in conjunction with SNAP and refundable CTC levels in order to right-size total benefit generosity without penalizing work
• The diminishing marginal returns to state EITC expansion in many cases
• The need for federal policymakers to address the “just-above-poverty trap” with EITC and SNAP reform
• How Congress can fruitfully expand low-income families’ access to the federal CTC by making it fully refundable — and how state policymakers can adjust TANF benefits accordingly as they see fit