Why the EITC Doesn’t Make Work Pay

Alstott offers an evaluation of the significance of the credit and, in a historical spirit, hark back to an earlier, critical perspective on the earned income tax credit (EITC)--a perspective rarely heard in recent years. She argues that these concerns remain apt, despite the expansion of the EITC and oft-repeated praise for its importance as an antipoverty program. Moreover, she highlights three features of U.S. law that constrain the effectiveness of the EITC in improving the wellbeing of low-income workers and their children: labor and employment laws that structure markets that produce low wages and harsh working conditions, laws that condition access to primary goods on market earnings, and a social safety net with gaps through which low-income workers often fall. Furthermore, she suggests the importance of reforms in the laws governing labor markets, consumption opportunities, and the social safety net

Tax Policy and Feminism: Competing Goals and Institutional Choices

Despite the dramatic increase in women\u27s labor market participation in recent decades, women continue to perform a disproportionate share of family labor, or the unpaid work of caring for children and other family members. Feminists have long been concerned that the gendered division of family labor reduces women\u27s wages, contributes to the high and disproportionate rate of poverty among single mothers, limits married women\u27s autonomy within the marital household, and circumscribes women\u27s life choices and social and economic power

GENDER QUOTAS FOR CORPORATE BOARDS: OPTIONS FOR LEGAL DESIGN IN THE UNITED STATES

The gender gap in U.S. business leadership remains shockingly wide. Today, 57.6% of all bachelors\u27 and higher degrees are awarded to women, including 54.2% of social science and law degrees, and 43.5% of science and mathematics degrees. But, despite their academic prowess, women find their careers stalled before they reach top management. In 2012, women held 16.6% of seats on Fortune 500 boards. One-tenth of the Fortune 500 had no women at all on their boards. Recently, U.S. activists, scholars, and policy makers have turned their attention to one notable effort to address the gender gap in management: gender quotas for corporate boards of directors. Twelve European countries have pioneered quotas in this context

What Does a Fair Society Owe Children and Their Parents?

What role do-and should-parents play in a fair society, taking the term fair society in a Rawlsian sense? Over time, our society\u27s demands on parents have steeply increased, while the economic rewards of child-rearing have diminished. At one time, children were an emotional and economic bonus, providing workers for the farm or factory as well as security in old-age. For today\u27s parents, in contrast, child-rearing is a one-way obligation: parents spend time and money preparing their offspring for modern life, without expecting much other than love in return

Federalism and U.S. Social Welfare Policy: Fundamental Change and New Uncertainties

The assigned topic for this paper, U.S. social welfare policy, potentially encompasses virtually the whole range of domestic social policy, from education to health care, from labor policy to anti-poverty policy to tax policy. To make the project manageable, this paper focuses on the major transfer programs that provide cash grants, food assistance, and medical care for the elderly, the disabled, the unemployed, and the poor. Although any boundary between these and other programs is arbitrary, most Americans probably consider these to be the basic components of our social welfare policy

A New Deal for Old Age

These are strange days. I, like many of you, am still struggling with the enormity of the presidential election. I am trying to comprehend the implications for the future of our country and the world. I fear that we, as a nation, will lose the progressive gains made in the last eight years. And, worse, we may face retrogression in every sphere of public life, from international relations to climate change to domestic economic policy. The strangeness of these days has a personal dimension. When I wrote the book that serves as the basis for this lecture, I had what now seems the impossible luxury of writing for an audience of progressives in power. Today, I no longer have that luxury. Progressives will soon be decidedly out of power in every branch of government. I find myself worrying about the role of lawyers in this new world. The rule of law permitted an election in which the winning candidate lied without challenge and made indecent and illegal threats in the guise of campaign promises. The rule of law will endow the winning candidate with unprecedented power over matters foreign and domestic

Your Stake in America

America has become a three-class society. More than twenty-five percent of its children now graduate from a four-year college and move into the ranks of the symbol-using class. Their increasing prosperity stands in sharp contrast to the grim picture of life at the bottom. The lowest twenty percent inhabit a world of low wages, dead-end jobs, and high unemployment despite the economic boom