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Title: Essays on Income, Social Policy, and Education
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Maxfield, Michelle
Essays on Income, Social Policy, and Education
Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, Michigan State University, 2014
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult
Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT)
Keyword(s): Child Care; Child Development; Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC); Educational Attainment; Geocoded Data; Maternal Employment; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); State-Level Data/Policy; Welfare

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Chapter 1: "The Effects of the Earned Income Tax Credit on Child Achievement and Long-Term Educational Attainment." The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a significant source of government assistance to low income families. Total outlay reached over $50 billion in 2008, with more than 97 percent of aid received by families with children (Internal Revenue Service 2011). Despite its size and pro-child goals, relatively little is known about how the EITC affects children directly. This study directly links EITC receipt throughout all ages of childhood to both contemporaneous achievement and long-run educational attainment. I take advantage of both Federal tax code changes and state EITC adoptions, which result in large variation in EITC generosity across state, time, and family size. Using the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I find that EITC expansions improve both contemporaneous and long-run educational outcomes of children. An increase in the maximum EITC of $1,000 (2008 dollars) in a given year significantly increases math achievement by about 0.072 nationally normed standard deviations. This change in EITC generosity during childhood also increases the probability of graduating high school or receiving a GED at age 19 by about 2.1 percentage points and increases the probability of completing one or more years of college by age 19 by about 1.4 percentage points. Estimated effects are larger for boys and minority children, and I find evidence that an expansion in the EITC is more effective at improving educational outcomes for children who are younger during the expansion.
Bibliography Citation
Maxfield, Michelle. Essays on Income, Social Policy, and Education. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, Michigan State University, 2014.