PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Hoynes, Hilary W.
AU  - Patel, Ankur J.
TI  - Effective Policy for Reducing Poverty and Inequality? The Earned Income Tax Credit and the Distribution of Income
AID  - 10.3368/jhr.53.4.1115.7494R1
DP  - 2017 Jul 07
TA  - Journal of Human Resources
PG  - 1115-7494R1
4099  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2017/07/05/jhr.53.4.1115.7494R1.short
4100  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2017/07/05/jhr.53.4.1115.7494R1.full
AB  - We examine the effect of the EITC on the poverty and income of single mothers with children using a quasi-experiment approach that leverages variation in generosity due to policy expansions across tax years and family sizes. We find that the income increasing effects of the EITC are concentrated between 75 and 150 percent of income-to-poverty with little effect at the lowest income levels and at levels of 250 percent of poverty and higher. We use these results to show that by capturing the indirect effects of the credit on earnings, static calculations of the anti-poverty effects of the EITC may be underestimated by almost 50 percent.