All Research
Commentary
CTC Expansion Rooted in Desire to Roll Back Work-based Welfare
Modifications to the child tax credit (CTC) are included in H.R. 7024, the Tax Relief…
Commentary
Another Flawed Analysis Shows that Single Mothers are Highly Sensitive to Changes in Work Incentives
Tuesday, I published a critique of a paper by Council of Economic Advisers senior economist…
Commentary
Solving Benefit Cliffs in SNAP
At their best, safety net policies in the US reduce poverty by spurring upward mobility…
Commentary
Research by a Top Biden Administration Economist Reinforces the Importance of Work Incentives in the Child Tax Credit and the Safety Net
For the past two years, economist Jacob Bastian has been the main researcher dedicated to…
Commentary
The Wyden-Smith Child Tax Credit and Work: Responding to Critics
The Wyden-Smith tax bill under consideration in the House has rekindled a debate about the…
Commentary
How Sensitive Are Single Mothers’ Work Decisions to a Change in Incentives? Correcting Misperceptions of the Evidence
Estimates of how employment responds to changes in single mothers’ return to work are central to evaluating policies such as child tax credit expansions. A review of decades of research finds that commonly used labor supply elasticity estimates cluster around 0.75, with averages of roughly 0.8 across both literature reviews and original studies. These findings indicate that the assumption of a 0.75 elasticity in policy analyses is consistent with the broader empirical literature rather than an outlier estimate.
Commentary
Changing the Official Poverty Measure Would Help Rich States and Hurt Poor States
Earlier this year, a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report recommended elevating the Supplemental Poverty…
Commentary
Changing the Official Poverty Measure Would Help Rich States and Hurt Poor States
In this post I discuss the policy implications of declaring the Supplemental Poverty Measure the…
Commentary
Putting This Year’s Poverty Numbers in Context
On Tuesday, the Census Bureau released its latest income and poverty estimates covering calendar year…
Commentary
Another Pandemic Legacy: Removing the EITC’s Work and Earnings Requirement
Since its origin in the 1970s, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) has been the…