TY  - JOUR
AU  - Eissa, Nada
AU  - Hoynes, Hilary
TI  - Redistribution and Tax Expenditures: The Earned Income Tax Credit
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14307
PY  - 2008
Y2  - September 2008
DO  - 10.3386/w14307
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14307
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14307.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Nada Eissa
313 Old North
Georgetown University
Washington DC, 20057
Tel: 202/687-0626
Fax: 202/687-5544
E-Mail: noe@georgetown.edu

Hilary W. Hoynes
Richard & Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy
University of California, Berkeley
2607 Hearst Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94720-7320
Tel: (510) 642-1166
E-Mail: hoynes@berkeley.edu
M1  - published as Nada Eissa, Hilary Hoynes. "Redistribution and Tax Expenditures: The Earned Income Tax Credit," in James M. Poterba, organizer, "Economic Analysis of Tax Expenditures" National Tax Journal, (National Tax Association), Vol. 64, no. 2, part 2 (2011)

M3  - presented at "Economics of Tax Expenditures Conference", March 27-29, 2008
AB  - This paper examines the distributional and behavioral effects of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).  We chart the growth of the program over time, and argue several expansions show that real responses to taxes are important.  We use tax data to show the distribution of benefits by income and family size, and examine the impacts of hypothetical reforms (expansions and contractions) to the credit.  Finally, we calculate the efficiency effects of marginal changes to EITC parameters.  Targeting the EITC to lower-income families by raising the phase-out rate generates a welfare loss for single mothers, primarily because of the disincentive to enter the labor market and not the traditional hours-of-work distortion.
ER  -