Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Using U.S. Census decennial and American Community Survey data linked to historical IRS Form 1040 records, we identify household-level eligibility for early years of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). We examine taxpayers beginning in 1979, and link these taxpayers to their children, whose outcomes we examine in later years of census and IRS data. Using a shift-share approach, we examine the impact that differential take-up by geography and demographic group had on the outcomes of children from EITC-eligible families. We also examine the exogenous changes to EITC generosity that rolled out in the late 1980s to mid-1990s, calculating the differential effect of these changes on children from different family sizes and different ages at program change. Our paper constitutes the first attempt to examine the EITC’s impact on long-term intergenerational income mobility.