TY - JOUR AU - Nichols, Austin AU - Rothstein, Jesse TI - The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 21211 PY - 2015 Y2 - May 2015 DO - 10.3386/w21211 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w21211 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w21211.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Austin Nichols Abt Associates 4550 Montgomery Avenue Suite 800 North Bethesda, MD E-Mail: austinnichols@gmail.com Jesse Rothstein Goldman School of Public Policy and Department of Economics University of California, Berkeley 2607 Hearst Avenue #7320 Berkeley, CA 94720-7320 Tel: 510/495-0646 Fax: 510/643-9657 E-Mail: rothstein@berkeley.edu M1 - published as Austin Nichols, Jesse Rothstein. "The Earned Income Tax Credit," in Robert A. Moffitt, editor, "Economics of Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, Volume 1" University of Chicago Press (2016) M3 - presented at "Means-Tested Transfer Programs", December 5-6, 2014 AB - We review research on the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), focusing on work appearing since the Hotz and Scholz (2003) review. Recent work has confirmed earlier findings that labor supply effects are positive for single mothers, smaller and negative for married mothers, and essentially nonexistent for men. Where earlier estimates indicated that all responses were on the extensive margin, some recent studies find evidence of non-zero, but small, intensive margin effects. We also review research on the incidence of the credit, suggesting that employers capture some of the program benefits through lower wages; on the large impact of the program on poverty rates and on children’s outcomes; and on families’ apparent preferences for lump-sum refunds over smaller payments distributed throughout the year. We present new evidence regarding the accuracy of EITC imputations in the Current Population Survey. We discuss proposals for reform, including a more generous childless credit, and argue that the EITC may be complementary to the minimum wage, rather than an alternative. ER -