The earned income tax credit and fertility

摘要: Government programs designed to provide income safety nets often restrict eligibility families with children, creating an unintended fertility incentive. This paper considers whether dramatically changing incentives in the earned tax credit affect rates USA. We use birth certificate data spanning period 1990 1999 test expansions influenced birthrate among targeted families. While economic theory would predict a positive effect of program for many eligible women, our results indicate that expanding produced only extremely small reductions higher order white women.