On March 3, 2022, Professor Elizabeth Ananat, Barnard’s Mallya Professor of Women and Economics, co-authored a paper that was published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The article, titled “Effects of the Expanded Child Tax Credit on Employment Outcomes: Evidence from Real-World Data from April to December 2021,” analyzes the impacts of the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) on labor supply.
The CTC, or monthly tax credit awarded to families with children, was expanded to combat increasing poverty, but some argue that its negative impact on the labor force offset its otherwise positive effects. Professor Ananat and her fellow researchers examined data from the Census Pulse and Current Population Survey, using a series of difference-in-differences analyses to evaluate employment rates before and after the expansion of the CTC. Results showed that the CTC had statistically insignificant impacts on the employment rates of adults who had children living in their households, suggesting that the expansion of the CTC did not counteract its poverty-reduction effects.