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Research report

The War on Poverty Moves to the Tax Code

Leonard E. Burman, Elaine Maag
January 7, 2014
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Abstract

In 1975, the federal income tax code joined the "War on Poverty" with the enactment of the earned income tax credit (EITC). Today, tax credits form some of the largest and most effective anti-poverty programs in the US. In 2012, the Census Bureau estimated that tax credits cut poverty (under a broad measure that includes the effect of programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits and the EITC) by 3 percentage points more than SNAP (1.6 points) and TANF (0.2 points). The tax credits cut child poverty by a whopping 6.7 percentage points.

Research Area

Individual Taxes Earned income tax credit (EITC) Low-income households
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Meet the Experts

  • Leonard E. Burman
    Institute Fellow
  • Elaine Maag
    Senior Fellow, Research
Research report

New Evidence on The Effect of The TCJA On the Housing Market

Robert McClelland, Livia Mucciolo, Safia Sayed
March 30, 2022
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