Earned-income-credit Books

Somehow, the most important anti-poverty program of the last half century has gotten almost no public attention. It is the Earned Income Tax Credit ("EITC"). It is larger in dollar amount than Temporary Assistance to Needy Families ("TANF") the successor to the univerersally despised Aid to Families with Dependent Children ("AFDC.") It is actually the largest and most succcessul anti-povety program of modern times. What it does is simple. It gives a substantial tax credit to the working poor. If the recipient is so poor that he or she is not paying any taxes, he or she gets a refund.

This program is popular on both Left and Right. It is very successful at both reducing poverty and encouraging work. The only major criticism of the program is that, since it hands money out to poor folks on the basis of tax returns, it encourages people to lie on their tax return (so as to get the money) and many people do so.

This book is a collection of raw social science on this subject. It gives you the history of the program. It gives you an economic analysis of it. It discusses the fraud problem.

All of this is very valuable, in substance. It is totally raw, unflitered social science, however. They do not expect any ordinary people to be reading this, so they make no concessions to ordinary English. You get multiple regression analysis, microeconomic theory and the whole enchilida. Definitely not a beach book. Not really a book at all. Is really a collection of technical articles on the subject, which are loosely related to each other. In short, as a book, it stinks, but the information in it is very valuable. Read it if you want technical details on the program. Otherwise, give it a miss.

Making Work Pay: The Earned Income Tax Credit And Its Impact On America's Families, edited by Bruce D. Meyer (Professor of Economics, Northwestern University) and Douglas Holtz-Eakin (Professor of Economics, Syracuse University) offers an impressive selection of scholarly essays by a number of distinguished and knowledgeable contributors discussing the history of the earned income tax credit, how it is used, its ramifications upon society and the tax structure, and more. Highly recommended for Economic Studies academic reference collections and supplemental reading lists, Making Work Pay offers a series of thoughtful presentation of learned and analytic viewpoints, and is a solid resource for anyone seeking to learn more about the fundamental nature and repercussions of tax credit policy.