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September 3, 2024

Doing Right by Kids: A Book Event

Material hardship among American children has never been lower. Yet children born to the most disadvantaged parents today are just as likely as they were in the past to become the most disadvantaged adults when they grow up. In a new edited volume, Doing Right Kids: Leveraging Social Capital and Innovation to Increase Opportunity, leading scholars…

September 3, 2024

Event: New Census Data on American Families’ Economic Well-Being

On September 10, the United States Census Bureau will release what is arguably 2024’s most important economic data. We will learn for the first time whether families’ economic well-being improved in 2023: Did wages outpace inflation and deliver real income gains for middle-class families? Did a strong labor market help families escape poverty? Did income…

August 30, 2024

Harris’s Child Tax Credit Plan Punishes Working Families

Vice President Kamala Harris recently announced an economic plan for her presidential campaign. A centerpiece is the transformation of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) into a child allowance. If it became reality, the policy would discourage parental employment and risk harming the long-run prospects of children. These unintended consequences together with the plan’s cost should…

August 29, 2024

The Distribution of Social Capital across Individuals and its Relationship to Income

Abstract There have been several attempts to measure social capital—the value inhering in relationships—at an aggregate level, but researchers lack comprehensive individual-level social capital measures. Using a combination of direct linkage and imputation across several nationally representative datasets, we produce a comprehensive measure of social capital at the individual level. We validate our measure by…

August 24, 2024

Harris’s Child Tax Credit Proposal Could Backfire, Perpetuating Poverty

A centerpiece of Vice President Harris’ newly released economic plan is a revamped Child Tax Credit, which would send families $6,000 for each newborn and up to $3,600 for older children, up from the existing $2,000 per child credit. Her proposal follows Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s recent call to increase the credit to $5,000…

August 5, 2024

Are Opportunity Zones an Effective Place-Based Policy?

When Congress passed and President Trump signed into law the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act at the end of 2017, most attention centered on the reduction in the corporate tax rate and overhaul of the individual tax code. Few noticed a provision added at the last minute establishing a new place-based policy in the United…

July 10, 2024

Has Income Growth between Generations of Americans Stalled?

A defining aspect of the American dream is that the economic well-being of each generation surpasses that of the previous one. However, commentators have questioned whether this holds true for the most recent generations. A 2022 Gallup poll found that only 42 percent of Americans expect today’s young people to have a better life than…

April 9, 2024

The Child Tax Credit: My Long-Read Q&A with Kevin Corinth

The Child Tax Credit is a tax benefit available to many American families for the purpose of reducing their federal income tax liability. It’s specifically designed to help offset the cost of raising children. The CTC of today, however, differs starkly from its pre-pandemic structure. Many economists, including Kevin Corinth, think that the post-pandemic changes were a step…

April 8, 2024

The $1,000 Tax Hike on Middle-Class Families

When Americans file their taxes in the coming weeks, one group will be singled out for a tax hike: middle-class families with children. This April, a family with three children making at least $42,000 will pay about $950 more in (inflation-adjusted) federal income taxes than they paid in 2018 — when the Tax Cuts and Jobs…

March 28, 2024

An Early Look at the Child Tax Credit Changes in the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024

Abstract The Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024, which the US House of Representatives passed on January 31, 2024, and the Senate is now considering, would make important changes to the child tax credit (CTC) if enacted. The legislation would increase CTC payments for families with lower earnings, apply a one-year…