We examine the relationship between the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Black-White after-tax income inequality from 1980-2020. The EITC lowers overall inequality by 5-10 percent in a typical year, improving the incomes of Black households relative to White households in the bottom half of the distribution. Gains in relative economic status emerged after the 1993 EITC expansion, concentrated among working class Black households, and not extending to those at the very bottom.
Using data from the Consumer Expenditures Survey, we document the level and volatility of quarterly consumption across the socio-economic distribution. While the measurement of economic well-being in the United States is focused on income, the secular and policy discourse prioritizes income-adequacy to meet family needs. This concern over income adequacy centers on the capacity of individuals and families to predictably consume minimally acceptable levels of basic needs, and the social and economic mobility consequences of low levels of consumption.
I examine trends in the material well-being of working-class households using data from the Current Population Survey in the two decades surrounding the Great Recession. Average earnings, homeownership, and insurance coverage all fell, while absolute poverty and food insecurity accelerated leading up to the Great Recession. After-tax incomes were stagnant for much of the distribution across and within skill groups.
There is a large literature on earnings and income volatility in labor economics, household finance, and macroeconomics. One strand of that literature has studied whether individual earnings volatility has risen or fallen in the U.S. over the last several decades. There are strong disagreements in the empirical literature on this important question, with some studies showing upward trends, some downward trends, and some flat trends. Some studies have suggested that the differences are the result of using flawed survey data instead of more accurate administrative data.
As of June 2020, the coronavirus pandemic has led to more than 2.3 million confirmed infections and 121 thousand fatalities in the United States, with starkly different incidence by race and ethnicity. Our study examines racial and ethnic disparities in confirmed COVID-19 cases across six diverse cities – Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, New York City, San Diego, and St. Louis – at the ZIP code level (covering 436 “neighborhoods” with a population of 17.7 million).
Health insurance improves health and reduces mortality. Expanding insurance is a central feature of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Persons who use drugs (PWUDs) have historically been at high risk of being uninsured. It is unknown if Appalachian PWUDs, who live in an extremely economically distressed region, are more likely to be insured since implementation of the ACA. Data from a cohort of 503 PWUDs from eastern Appalachian Kentucky, who were interviewed at seven time-points between 2008 and 2017, were analysed using mixed effects regression models.
We document trends in earnings volatility separately by gender in combination with other characteristics such as race, educational attainment, and employment status using unique linked survey and administrative data for the tax years spanning 1995-2015. We also decompose the variance of trend volatility into within- and between-group contributions, as well as transitory and permanent shocks.
We use longitudinal administrative tax data from Washington DC (DC) to study how EITC expansions undertaken by Washington DC affect income and inequality in the city. We find that DC EITC credit expansions between 2001 and 2009 are associated with recipient pre-tax earnings growth of roughly 3-4 percent, primarily among single mothers. Together these credits reduce post-tax inequality for the 10th percentile relative to median households. However, composition changes in the city and growing overall inequality mitigates this inequality reduction toward the end of the period.
This aim of this paper is to assess the economic status of rural people five decades after publication of President Johnson's National Commission on Rural Poverty report The People Left Behind. Using data from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the CPS, along with county data from the Regional Economic Information System, I focus on how changes in employment, wages, and the social safety net have influenced the evolution of poverty and inequality in rural and urban places.
We study household income inequality in both Great Britain and the United States and the interplay between labour market earnings and the tax system. While both Britain and the US have witnessed secular increases in 90/10 male earnings inequality over the last three decades, this measure of inequality in net family income has declined in Britain while it has risen in the US. We study the interplay between labour market earnings in the family, assortative mating, the tax and benefit system and household income inequality.
