Work Requirements and Child Tax Benefits

Jacob Goldin, Tatiana Homonoff, Neel A. Lal, Ithai Lurie, Katherine Michelmore and Matthew Unrath

No 32343, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Many U.S. safety-net programs condition benefit eligibility on work. Eliminating work requirements would better target benefits to the neediest families but attenuates pro-work incentives. Using administrative records, we study how expanding a California child tax credit to non-workers affected maternal labor supply. We rely on quasi-random birth-timing and a novel method for using placebo analyses to maximize estimator precision. Eliminating the work requirement caused very few mothers to exit the labor force; our 95% confidence interval excludes reductions over one-third of one percent. Our results suggest expanding tax benefits to the lowest-income families need not meaningfully reduce workforce participation.

JEL-codes: H24 I38 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-04
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