Pritzker Children's Initiative awards grant for child poverty analysis

PolicyEngine has received a $150,000 grant from the Pritzker Children's Initiative to expand our policy analysis capabilities for children and families. The grant will support our PolicyEngine Policy Analysis Expansion project through 2026.

The grant will fund three major initiatives focused on helping researchers and policymakers understand how tax and benefit reforms affect families with young children:

We will build an interactive dashboard enabling users to model how federal and state policy changes affect child poverty rates. The dashboard will support simulations of Child Tax Credit, Earned Income Tax Credit, dependent exemptions, universal basic income, and SNAP reforms, with the ability to vary amounts, age eligibility (including prenatal-3, 0-5, and 0-17), phaseout structures, and state-specific provisions. Results will display fiscal costs, child poverty impacts by age group, and distributional effects by income decile.

We will expand PolicyEngine's rules engine to model Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) eligibility and benefit calculations in all 50 states. This work will provide programmatic representations of each state's policy rules, enabling complete nationwide policy analysis of these programs.

We will provide training sessions and analytical support to national partners working on prenatal-to-age-three policy, including current PolicyEngine users the Niskanen Center and the Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center, whose Policy Impact Calculator uses PolicyEngine for tax calculations. Through webinars and direct consultation, we aim to reach leaders in at least 30 states who can use PolicyEngine's tools for child poverty analysis.

The Pritzker Children's Initiative works toward a world where every child thrives and flourishes by age three, with every family having access to the resources and supports they need. Their movement building strategy aims to ensure that by 2027, families with children in the US live in states where significant new public resources have been invested in prenatal-to-age-three supports.

We are grateful to the Pritzker Children's Initiative for supporting our work to democratize policy analysis tools that can inform evidence-based decisions affecting children and families nationwide.