← Research WORKING PAPER · 2025

The Earned Income Tax Credit and the Intergenerational Persistence of Poverty

Zachary Parolin, Benjamin Glasner, Ronald Mincy, Christopher Wimer

Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, no. 2025-22

Summary

Using 50 years of Panel Study of Income Dynamics data, this paper tests whether expansions of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) reduced the intergenerational persistence of poverty, exploiting variation in credit generosity across time, place, and family size. The EITC improves long-run pre-tax/transfer poverty outcomes overall, but not post-tax/transfer poverty, because transfers received in adulthood offset the higher pre-tax poverty of adults who benefited less from EITC expansions. Across 1,296 specifications, the EITC does not reduce relative poverty persistence or any persistence measure based on post-tax/transfer income.

A plain-language summary written for this site, not the authors' published abstract. See the published version for the original.

Cite this

Zachary Parolin, Benjamin Glasner, Ronald Mincy, and Christopher Wimer. 2025. “The Earned Income Tax Credit and the Intergenerational Persistence of Poverty.” Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, no. 2025-22. https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/publications/no-2025-22-the-earned-income-tax-credit-and-the-intergenerational-persistence-of-poverty.

BibTeX

@techreport{parolin_glasner_2025_eitc_intergenerational,
  title = {The {Earned Income Tax Credit} and the Intergenerational Persistence of Poverty},
  author = {Parolin, Zachary and Glasner, Benjamin and Mincy, Ronald and Wimer, Christopher},
  institution = {Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford},
  type = {INET Oxford Working Paper},
  number = {2025-22},
  year = {2025},
  month = oct,
}