Relaxing financial constraints with tax credits and migrating out of rural and distressed America

Jacob Bastian and Dan Black

Journal of Public Economics, 2024, vol. 234, issue C

Abstract: There is a strong and growing interest in helping families move to areas with higher economic opportunity. We exploit variation in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to examine how increasing household income affects migration, with a focus on women from rural and economically distressed areas. We find that higher income increases migration out of rural and distressed areas—primarily among unmarried mothers—to areas with higher employment and earnings, and lower unemployment rates. Many of these moves occur across counties or commuting zones, but we find no effect on moving across states. We also find decreases in living “doubled up” with another family, and reductions in commute length. We are the first to show that the EITC helps women move to economic opportunity, with the most likely mechanism being relaxing household financial constraints.

Keywords: Migration; Earned income tax credit; EITC; Female labor supply; Working mothers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272724000471
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:234:y:2024:i:c:s0047272724000471

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105111

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba

More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().