IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/apeclt/v30y2023i20p2965-2970.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The effects of increasing income for vulnerable families: better birth outcomes, continued disparities

Author

Listed:
  • Tami Gurley
  • Brian Hill

Abstract

Evidence suggests that cash transfers through the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) programme induce better birth outcomes. We use US Vital Statistics data for all births in Maryland from 1995–2004 to capture the casual effects of implementing a local EITC programme across households. Alternative difference-in-differences (DD) comparison groups compare treatment households with like households in non-EITC counties and ineligible households in the same county. We find that the implementation of the local EITC reduced the probability of low birth weight by as much as 3.5 percentage points for births to White and Black mothers with little evidence of an effect for Hispanic mothers. This reduction represents a 46% decrease for White mothers and 26% decrease for Black mothers. Despite improving average birth outcomes, EITC cash transfers did not reduce disparities in birth outcomes.

Suggested Citation

  • Tami Gurley & Brian Hill, 2023. "The effects of increasing income for vulnerable families: better birth outcomes, continued disparities," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(20), pages 2965-2970, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:apeclt:v:30:y:2023:i:20:p:2965-2970
    DOI: 10.1080/13504851.2022.2116387
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13504851.2022.2116387
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13504851.2022.2116387?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:apeclt:v:30:y:2023:i:20:p:2965-2970. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEL20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.