Expanding New York State's Earned Income Tax Credit Program: The Effect on Work, Income, and Poverty

Abstract

Given its favorable employment incentives and ability to target the working poor, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) has become the primary antipoverty program at both the federal and state levels. However, when evaluating the effect of EITC programs on income and poverty, governments generally calculate the effect using simple accounting, where the value of the state or federal EITC benefit is added to a person's income. These calculations omit the behavioral incentives created by the existence of these programs, the corresponding effect on labor supply and hours worked, and therefore the actual effect on income and poverty. This paper simulates the full effect of an expansion of the New York State EITC benefit on employment, hours worked, income, poverty, and program expenditures. These results are then compared to those omitting labor supply effects. Relative to estimates excluding labor supply effects, the preferred behavioral results show that an expansion of the New York State EITC increases employment by an additional 14,244 persons, labor earnings by an additional $95.8 million, family income by an additional $84.5 million, decreases poverty by an additional 56,576 persons, and increases costs to the state by $29.7 million. These results emphasize the importance of modeling labor supply behavior when analyzing the impact of the EITC.