Consumer response to child tax credit

Norbert Michel () and Nazneen Ahmad ()

Empirical Economics, 2012, vol. 43, issue 3, 1199-1214

Abstract: This article uses micro-level data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX) to study consumers’ spending responses to the child tax credit. The article provides one test of the permanent-income hypothesis (PIH) that infers that temporary changes in income have little effect on consumer spending, at the initiation of the child tax credit in 1997, and a second PIH test when the credit was increased in 2003. The evidence supports the PIH in both 1997 and 2003, even using three different proxies for liquidity-constrained households. Separate from any PIH implications, our findings suggest the child tax credit did not provide a short-term consumption stimulus in either of the time periods studied. Our results therefore cast some doubt on whether this type of tax credit should be considered sound fiscal policy. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2012

Keywords: Child tax credit; Permanent-income hypothesis; Predictable change in income; Fiscal policy; H31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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DOI: 10.1007/s00181-011-0531-7

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