Average Families
Who Benefits From the Child Tax Credit?
Jacob Goldin & Katherine Michelmore
NBER Working Paper, October 2020
Abstract:
The Child Tax Credit (CTC) provides a cash transfer of up to $2,000 per child under age 17 to millions of families in the United States. Using the Current Population Survey, we examine the aggregate effects and distributional implications of the rules governing children's eligibility for the credit. While approximately 90% of all children qualify for at least a partial CTC, we document striking disparities in eligibility by income and race. The vast majority of children living in households in the bottom decile of the national AGI distribution are completely ineligible for the CTC and the majority of filers in the bottom thirty percent are eligible only for a partial credit. In contrast, virtually all children living in households in the top half of the income distribution qualify for the full credit amount. Approximately three-quarters of white and Asian children are eligible for the full CTC, compared to only about half of Black and Hispanic children. We use our results to estimate the distributional effects of a range of reforms to the CTC eligibility rules. Our results suggest that reforming the credit to include a larger share of children would more evenly distribute the credit's benefits across children of different races and incomes.
The effect of early childhood intervention on risk-taking, mental health, and cognitive ability: The mediating role of life history strategy
Curtis Dunkel et al.
Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Data from the Carolina Abecedarian Project (N = 104) was used to test the hypothesis that infants deemed at-risk who received an intensive and individualized intervention would develop a slower life history (LH) strategy as measured in young adulthood. Additionally, it was predicted that this effect on life history strategy would mediate several effects of the intervention. This possibility was tested in the areas of risk-taking, mental health, and cognitive ability. Results supported the hypothesis that the intervention caused a slowing of LH strategy and that LH strategy mediated the effect of the intervention on risk-taking, mental health, and cognitive ability. Lastly, it was predicted that any effects would be strongest at the most molar level of measurement. This was found for a composite trait and cognitive ability, but not for risk-taking and mental health. The results have several significant implications, but given the small sample size, replication is especially important.
For Love and Money? Earnings and Marriage Among Same-Sex Couples
Michael Martell & Peyton Nash
Journal of Labor Research, September 2020, Pages 260-294
Abstract:
We investigate the earnings effects of marriage among same-sex couples in the United States. Gays and lesbians in the United States have only recently been allowed to enter into legally recognized marriages. As such, we know little about the impact of same-sex marriage on the economic lives of gays and lesbians. We use data from the 2013 to 2017 American Community Survey to show that married gay men experience a 3% marriage earnings premium and lesbian women experience a 6% marriage earnings premium relative to their unmarried cohabiting counterparts. The marriage premium for gay men is smaller than that of heterosexual married men, but the lesbian marriage premium is similar in size to the premium for heterosexual women. In both cases, we show that the marriage premium is larger relative to single gay men and lesbian women in the 2013 to 2017 National Health Interview Surveys. We also find that the marriage premium is more than two times larger among individuals who earn more than their partners, and marriage increases intrahousehold differences in labor market outcomes. This pattern is consistent with a common explanation of the earnings premium experienced by heterosexual men and women: marriage increases investments in relationships that affect patterns of household specialization. Therefore, our results suggest that the effect of marriage on how households organize their time is general and not unique to different-sex households.
Child Support Enforcement and Child Mortality
Hamid NoghaniBehambari, Farzaneh Noghani & Nahid Tavassoli
Texas Tech University Working Paper, August 2020
Abstract:
This paper explores the potential benefit of enforcement in Child Support policies to child mortality rates. Exploiting the sharp changes in Child Support laws across states and over the years 1975-1993, we find that adoption of a full set of policies reduces the child death rate by 23% relative to the mean. The results are robust across multiple sub-samples and a variety of specifications. Three potential mechanisms of impact include better health utilization during the prenatal period, improved birth outcomes, and moving toward better-quality health insurance for children.
Lift-the-flap features in "first words" picture books impede word learning in 2-year-olds
Jeanne Shinskey
Journal of Educational Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Toddlers learn more about the world from picture books with photographs instead of drawings, but commercial books often have tactile features such as flaps that may counterintuitively hinder learning. This study tested how lift-the-flap features in a commercial picture book of first words affected 2-year-olds' (N = 32) learning of a new word for an unfamiliar food. Sixteen children saw the original lift-the-flap book, which depicted photos, and 16 saw the same book except that it was modified to have no flaps. The researcher went through the book with the child, labeling each fruit and vegetable six times. All children were unfamiliar with starfruit and were taught that it was called "carambola." After they saw the book, children's learning was tested by asking them to choose the target (i.e., "Show me carambola") from an array of 3 photos and then from an array of 3 fake food objects. Children who saw the lift-the-flap book chose the carambola target significantly less often than those who saw the modified no-flap book, and only those who saw the no-flap book performed above chance. However, the 2 groups did not differ in recognizing six higher frequency food words that were also presented in the book. Thus, 2-year-olds' word learning was hindered when taught using a book with tactile features versus one without. This finding supports dual representation accounts arguing that a symbol's concreteness interferes with representation of its abstract referent, and cognitive load accounts suggesting that tactile features distract attention from the book's content.