The EITC one of the federal government

The EITC, one of the federal government’s largest anti-poverty programs, has been a recent exception. Research has begun to link improved income resulting from EITC benefits to improved health outcomes (Baughman & Duchovny, 2016; Muennig, Mohit, Wu, Jia & Rosen, 2016; Hoynes, Miller and Simon, 2015; Evans & Garthwaite, 2014; Larrimore, 2011; Strully et al., 2010; Arno, Sohler, Viola & Schechter, 2009). This study adds a new dimension by examining the EITC’s ecological health impact. Specifically, we examine whether EITC benefits impact health outcomes across a geographic unit—the neighborhood—distinctive from the individual or household level. The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 situates our study within the existing research. Section 3 describes our data and methodology. Section 4 presents our results and Section 5 discusses their implications. Section 6 concludes.
Related literature
Background, data and methods
Results
Discussion These results provide empirical evidence that ccr2 antagonist increased state and local EITC benefits improves at least one measure of health for low-income NYC neighborhoods—low birthweight rates. At least two other studies link improvements in health outcomes to increases in state EITC benefits similar in size to what we are examining. Strully et al. (2010) link improved birthweight levels to the presence of a state EITC benefit. The average state EITC rate examined by Strully et al. is roughly equal to the increase in the combined New York state and local credits, i.e., 15 percentage points. Baughman and Duchovny (2016) find limited health effects among older children who live in households likely to receive EITC benefits. The average state EITC benefits among these children is about $230 (2012$). This state EITC benefit level is similar, but lower, than the average net increase in EITC benefits we observed among households in our low-income neighborhoods ($315, as noted above). Second, we compare our neighborhood-level EITC effect to its effect at the individual level. Hoynes et al. (2012) present estimates of how the EITC affects low birthweight rates at the individual/family level appropriate for comparison with our neighborhood-level estimates. Specifically, they estimate how much a $1,000 EITC (2009$) “treatment on treated” (ToT) reduces low birthweight rates among single mothers with young children and a high school degree or less. These single mothers make up their treated (or “high-impact”) group since a large share of that demographic group qualifies for EITC benefits: 42% of single women 18-45 years old with a child under age 3 and a high school education or less receive EITC benefits. Our treated group – low-income neighborhoods – has a comparable level of EITC eligibility (39%) as indicated by the share of EITC tax filers (see Table 3). In other words, our poor neighborhoods, with respect to EITC “exposure,” resemble the demographic group of single mothers with young children and a high school degree or less. We can therefore directly compare our estimates of a $1,000 (2009$) ToT to that of Hoynes et al. (2012) to gauge whether differences exist between the individual/household level and neighborhood-level EITC health effects. We present the comparison figures in (Table 5). Our regression estimate from our preferred estimation suggests that a 15-percentage-point EITC rate increase reduces the low birthweight rates in NYC’s impoverished neighborhoods by 0.45%. We know from the figures presented in Table 2 that households experienced an average net gain of $315 (in 2012$) in benefits from 1997-99 to 2005-07 when the state and local EITC rate increased by 15-percentage points. If we scale this figure to show the impact of a $1,000 (2009$) EITC treatment, the ToT per $1,000 would be 1.4 percentage points, representing a 15% reduction in the average low birthweight rate in those neighborhoods. In the last row of Table 5, we present Hoynes et al.’s estimates of the impact of the ToT per $1,000 at the individual level. Their estimates for this figure range between 6.7 and 10.8%. Our point estimate of the EITC health impact measured at the neighborhood level appears substantially larger than when measured at the individual level—in the range of 50% larger.