State Earned Income Tax Credits and Participation in Regular and Informal Work

I use variation in state EITCs between 1997-2005 to identify changes in informal and regular labor supply by unmarried men and women with children. Men’s participation in the informal sector declines by 6 percentage points if a state EITC increases by 10% of the federal credit. Usual regular-sector hours worked per week increase by 4.1 and informal-sector hours per week fall by 2.7 with no effect on total hours. Single men with children appear to respond to state EITCs on the intensive rather than extensive margin and shift away from informal work toward regular work without changing total labor supplied. I find no effects on women’s participation in either regular or informal work.Informal economy, earned income tax credit

Non-linear effects of tax changes on output: The role of the initial level of taxation

We estimate the effect of worldwide tax changes on output following the narrative approach developed for the United States by Romer and Romer (2010). We use a novel dataset on value-added taxes for 51 countries (21 industrial and 30 developing) for the period 1970–2014 to identify 96 tax changes. We then use contemporaneous economic records to classify such changes as endogenous or exogenous to current (or prospective) economic conditions. In line with theoretical distortionary and disincentive-based arguments – and using exogenous tax changes – we find that the effect of tax changes on output is highly non-linear. The tax multiplier is essentially zero under relatively low initial tax rate levels and more negative as the initial tax rate increases. Based on a global sample, these novel non-linear findings suggest that the recent consensus pointing to large negative tax multipliers in industrial countries, particularly in industrial Europe (e.g., Alesina, Favero, and Giavazzi, 2015) may represent a special case driven by high initial tax rates in these countries

Worldwide trends in underweight and obesity from 1990 to 2022: a pooled analysis of 3663 population-representative studies with 222 million children, adolescents, and adults

Background Underweight and obesity are associated with adverse health outcomes throughout the life course. We estimated the individual and combined prevalence of underweight or thinness and obesity, and their changes, from 1990 to 2022 for adults and school-aged children and adolescents in 200 countries and territories. Methods We used data from 3663 population-based studies with 222 million participants that measured height and weight in representative samples of the general population. We used a Bayesian hierarchical model to estimate trends in the prevalence of different BMI categories, separately for adults (age ≥20 years) and school-aged children and adolescents (age 5–19 years), from 1990 to 2022 for 200 countries and territories. For adults, we report the individual and combined prevalence of underweight (BMI <18·5 kg/m2) and obesity (BMI ≥30 kg/m2). For schoolaged children and adolescents, we report thinness (BMI <2 SD below the median of the WHO growth reference) and obesity (BMI >2 SD above the median). Findings From 1990 to 2022, the combined prevalence of underweight and obesity in adults decreased in 11 countries (6%) for women and 17 (9%) for men with a posterior probability of at least 0·80 that the observed changes were true decreases. The combined prevalence increased in 162 countries (81%) for women and 140 countries (70%) for men with a posterior probability of at least 0·80. In 2022, the combined prevalence of underweight and obesity was highest in island nations in the Caribbean and Polynesia and Micronesia, and countries in the Middle East and north Africa. Obesity prevalence was higher than underweight with posterior probability of at least 0·80 in 177 countries (89%) for women and 145 (73%) for men in 2022, whereas the converse was true in 16 countries (8%) for women, and 39 (20%) for men. From 1990 to 2022, the combined prevalence of thinness and obesity decreased among girls in five countries (3%) and among boys in 15 countries (8%) with a posterior probability of at least 0·80, and increased among girls in 140 countries (70%) and boys in 137 countries (69%) with a posterior probability of at least 0·80. The countries with highest combined prevalence of thinness and obesity in school-aged children and adolescents in 2022 were in Polynesia and Micronesia and the Caribbean for both sexes, and Chile and Qatar for boys. Combined prevalence was also high in some countries in south Asia, such as India and Pakistan, where thinness remained prevalent despite having declined. In 2022, obesity in school-aged children and adolescents was more prevalent than thinness with a posterior probability of at least 0·80 among girls in 133 countries (67%) and boys in 125 countries (63%), whereas the converse was true in 35 countries (18%) and 42 countries (21%), respectively. In almost all countries for both adults and school-aged children and adolescents, the increases in double burden were driven by increases in obesity, and decreases in double burden by declining underweight or thinness. Interpretation The combined burden of underweight and obesity has increased in most countries, driven by an increase in obesity, while underweight and thinness remain prevalent in south Asia and parts of Africa. A healthy nutrition transition that enhances access to nutritious foods is needed to address the remaining burden of underweight while curbing and reversing the increase in obesit

Essays on Child Support Enforcement and Tax Evasion.

This dissertation explores impacts of state child support laws and earned income tax credits (EITCs) on fathers' contact with their children; their participation in regular and off-the-books work; and whether they substitute toward informal child support in response to "taxes" on formal support. The first essay uses state laws requiring employers to withhold child support as an exogenous source of variation in child support payment methods. Holding payment amount constant, if payment method does not affect behavior, withholding should change neither the amount of support paid nor the amount of parent-child contact for parents. I examine how payment method affects father-child contact and payment of in-kind support by instrumenting for withholding status using variation in the timing of state withholding laws. For fathers who are not in arrears, withholding reduces the amount of time fathers spend with their children and the likelihood of providing in-kind support. The results are consistent with a salience model in which changing the payment method changes the visibility of the child's consumption. The second essay examines the effects of state policies granting taxpayers an additional percentage of the federal EITC. EITCs subsidize regular employment and make it more attractive relative to off-the-books work. I use variation in state EITCs between 1997-2005 to identify labor supply responses in the Fragile Families data. Among unmarried urban fathers, an increase in a state EITC of one percent of the federal credit has large negative effects on participation in informal work but no significant effect on participation in the regular sector. Usual hours worked per week increase in the regular sector and decrease in the underground sector. The last essay examines whether states' elimination of welfare disregard rules for child support payments caused parents to substitute between formal and informal forms of support. Using state-level policy variation in child support disregard policies, I find that a $100 decrease in the disregard corresponds to a 4.1 percent increase in the probability a child will receive in-kind child support. In addition, I find turnover of about one third of the child support sample between Survey of Program Dynamics waves.Ph.D.EconomicsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/61572/1/srpotter_1.pd