The United States

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua T. McCabe
Keyword(s):  
Child Poverty ◽  
The United States ◽  
Tax Credits ◽  
National Commission ◽  
Tax Credit ◽  
Tax Relief ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Poor Children ◽  
Child Tax Credit

Chapter 6 looks at how the National Commission on Children brought attention to the problem of child poverty in the US, leading to the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit in 1993 and the introduction of the nonrefundable Child Tax Credit in 1997. In contrast to the cases of Canada and the UK, the growth of these tax credits, tracing their legacy to the dependent exemption in the tax system, was premised on the logic of tax relief rather than the logic of income supplementation. Originally, the National Commission on Children released recommendations for a fully refundable Child Tax Credit as the best way to tackle child poverty. This served as a successful springboard in Canada and the UK. This was not the case in the US, where the logic of tax relief remained dominant. Initial attempts to introduce a fully refundable Child Tax Credit quickly failed. Policymakers and the public deemed poor children undeserving of tax credits because their parents were not technically taxpayers.

Canada

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua T. McCabe
Keyword(s):  
Income Tax ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
Tax Credits ◽  
Primary Method ◽  
Tax Relief ◽  
The Us ◽  
Cash Benefits ◽  
Child Tax Credit ◽  
Family Allowances ◽  
Initial Change

Chapter 4 examines how Canadian policymakers’ renewed promise to tackle child poverty translated into the Child Tax Benefit, the nonrefundable Child Tax Credit, and the Working Income Tax Benefit. Whereas the logic of tax relief served as the springboard for fiscalization in the US, the logic of income supplementation drove the process in Canada. This difference had important implications for the shape and scope of Canadian tax credits, enabling them to significantly reduce child poverty relative to the much weaker outcomes in the US. Family allowances offered policymakers an alternative to welfare as the primary method of delivering cash benefits to children. Canadian policymakers, including conservative policymakers and profamily groups, saw expanding child tax credits as a way to “take children off welfare” by redirecting benefits through a nonstigmatizing program. The initial change occurred under the Progressive Conservatives in 1992 and was consolidated under the Liberals in 1997.

The United Kingdom

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua T. McCabe
Keyword(s):  
Family Income ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
Tax Credits ◽  
Tax Credit ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Working Families ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Child Tax Credit

Chapter 5 examines how in the UK the Blair government’s promise to end child poverty translated into the introduction of the Working Families Tax Credit in 1998, which was subsequently split into the Working Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit in 2001. The UK follows the Canadian case in terms of tracing the dominant logic of income supplementation to the cultural legacy of family allowances and ends up with the same combination of refundable tax credits. When the Labour government reached the limits of income-testing, the Treasury quietly turned to fiscalization as the solution to expand benefits in the face of pressures for austerity. The Family Income Supplement was simply converted into the Working Families Tax Credit. While its predecessor had been classified as spending, the Working Families Tax Credit was classified as revenues not collected. The limits of fiscalization were soon tested, as the Office of National Statistics called the government’s reclassification into question.

POOR CHILDREN IN RICH COUNTRIES

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 83 (6) ◽  
pp. A46-A46
Author(s):  
Edgar K. Marcuse
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
Poverty Line ◽  
The United States ◽  
Poverty Rate ◽  
Income Support ◽  
White Children ◽  
The Us ◽  
Families With Children ◽  
Poor Children

The industrial countries in the world have a higher standard of living than at any time in history, but within the wealthy countries, there are still a number of children who live in poverty. The United States, which is the wealthiest country of six studied (Australia, Canada, Sweden, United States, United Kingdom, West Germany), had the highest poverty rate among children and the second highest poverty rate among families with children. From 1970 to 1987, the poverty rate for children in the United States increased from 15 to 20%. . . Child poverty rates vary enormously by the structure of the child's family. In every country [of the six studied], child poverty rates are at least twice as high, and usually much higher, in single-parent families than in two-parent families. . . . Perhaps the most striking figures are those that show the percentage of all children and of all poor children who are living in families with incomes below the 75% of the US poverty line. Here we find that US poor children are the worst off of children in any country [of the six studied] including Australia, with almost 10% existing at an income level at least 25% below the official US poverty standard. . . .In the United States, black families with children are particularly economically disadvantaged relative to white (non-black and non-Hispanic) families. The poverty rates among black children are three times as high as the rates of white children. Poverty rates of Hispanic children in the United States are double those of white children as well, But the poverty rate of US white children is still 11.4%. . .higher than the poverty rate of all children in [the] other [five] countries except Australia. . . Heterogeneity does matter; poverty rates are different for different populations and US poverty rates are high, due in part to its social and ethnic diversity. But this diversity does not matter enough to explain fully the high poverty of US children in general or even white children in particular. . . . One of the reasons why many children in the United States are poor is that 27% of all poor families with children and 23% of single-parent families receive no public income support. . . . In every other country, at least 99% of both types of families that were defined as poor by the Us poverty line definition receive some type of income support. . . . All the countries, except the United States, have child allowances that reach at least 80% of poor children. . . . Another reason why the United States does less well . . . is because the poverty gap is larger in the United States. . . . The larger the poverty gap, the more income is needed to remove a family from poverty. And the United States, which has the biggest gap for these families, provides the least income support per family. . . . Every country's welfare and other tax transfer programs reflect their own cultural and social philosophies. . . . Any change in the tax and transfer policies must be done within the national context of the country's social philosophy. But international comparisons of the poverty of today's children raise long-term questions. To the extent that poverty of children is related to poverty as adults, the quality of our future work force may be affected by the present poverty of our children. And the poverty of our children today may affect our long-term competitiveness with other wealthy countries who tolerate much less child poverty than does the United States.

The Fiscalization of Social Policy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua T. McCabe
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Tax Credits ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Welfare Regimes ◽  
Strategic Adaptation ◽  
Tax Relief ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Family Allowances

This book challenges the conventional wisdom on American exceptionalism, offering the first and only comparative analysis of the politics of child and in-work tax credits. This comparative approach, analyzing the US, Canada, and the UK, upends everything we thought we knew about the politics of tax credits, accounting for both the timing of their development and the distribution of their benefits among families across liberal welfare regimes. Rather than attributing these changes to antiwelfare attitudes, mobilization of conservative forces, shifts toward workfare, or racial antagonism, the book argues that the growing use of tax credits for social policy was a strategic adaptation to austerity in all three countries but that the historical absence of family allowances in the US left the country with a policy legacy that institutionalized a distinct “logic of tax relief,” ensuring that the poorest American families would be ineligible for tax credits. Focusing on the twin puzzles of the growth and distribution of new tax credits across the three countries, the book explains both their convergence on the use of these tax credits and the US’ divergence from the UK and Canada on the distribution of these tax credits’ benefits.

scholarly journals American Exceptionalism Revisited: Tax Relief, Poverty Reduction, and the Politics of Child Tax Credits

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua McCabe ◽  
Elizabeth Popp Berman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Tax Credits ◽  
Welfare Regimes ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
Tax Relief

In the 1990s, several liberal welfare regimes (LWRs) introduced child tax credits (CTCs) aimed at reducing child poverty. While in other countries these tax credits were refundable, the United States alone introduced a nonrefundable CTC. As a result, the United States was the only country in which poor and working-class families were paradoxically excluded from these new benefits. A comparative analysis of Canada and the United States shows that American exceptionalism resulted from the cultural legacy of distinct public policies. We argue that policy changes in the 1940s institutionalized different "logics of appropriateness" that later constrained policymakers in the 1990s. Specifically, the introduction of family allowances in Canada and other LWR countries naturalized a logic of income supplementation in which families could legitimately receive cash benefits without the stigma of "welfare." Lacking this policy legacy, American attempts to introduce a refundable CTC were quickly derailed by policymakers who saw it as equivalent to welfare. Instead, they introduced a narrow, nonrefundable CTC under the alternative logic of "tax relief," even though this meant excluding the lowest-income families. The cultural legacy of past policies can explain American exceptionalism not only with regard to CTCs but to other social policies as well.

Tax Equality for Immigrants: The Indispensable Ingredient for Remedying Child Poverty in the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 233150242110348
Author(s):  
Roberto Suro ◽  
Hannah Findling
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Security ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Income Tax ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
The United States ◽  
Tax Credits ◽  
Tax Credit ◽  
Childhood Poverty ◽  
Highly Effective

Both at the federal and state levels, tax credits have proved effective policy instruments to combat poverty, and they are at the heart of President Biden's massive initiative on childhood poverty. However, about one of every five children suffering poverty in the United States has an unauthorized immigrant parent and thus little or no access to tax credits. That is nearly two million children, and 85 percent of them are US citizens. Achieving historic reductions in childhood poverty thus will be impossible without remedying the eligibility exclusions and bureaucratic impediments that unauthorized immigrants face in the US tax system. All individuals who make money and reside in the United States are obliged to pay federal income taxes via a return filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). For unauthorized immigrants and others who do not qualify for a Social Security Number (SSN) that requires an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN). In this two-tier system, ITIN filers have the same income tax due as Social Security filers, but they do not receive the same credits. ITIN filers have never been eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and some of their children were excluded from the Child Tax Credit (CTC) in the Trump administration's 2017 tax bill. Both credits are highly effective anti-poverty programs, providing immediate relief while also incentivizing work and earnings. The tax credits are the critical policy tool in Biden's American Plan for reducing child poverty, and they would be funded through the budget reconicilation legislation devised by Congressional Democrats in the summer of 2021. As summer drew to a close, ITIN inclusion was beginning to enter the discussion among advocates and legislators about the bill's detailed provisions. But eligibility is not the only barrier. Internal government monitors have repeatedly criticized the IRS for heavy-handed and inefficient practices that have placed undue burdens on ITIN taxpayers and that have hindered compliance with the law. The use of ITINs has plummeted in recent years from a high of 4.6 million returns in 2014 to 2.5 million in 2020. Prompted by the economic losses and the medical toll suffered by unauthorized immigrants during the pandemic and by their newly valued roles as “essential workers,” the federal government and several state governments have taken important steps to lessen the exclusion of ITIN taxpayers. The first federal stimulus package excluded not only ITIN holders but also their family members with SSNs. Congress extended eligibility to members of ITIN households with SSNs for the second and third stimulus checks. Meanwhile, California, Colorado, Maryland, New Mexico, Washington, Maine, and Oregon broke with the federal government and made ITIN filers fully eligible for their state EITCs, and as of July 2021 similar measures were under consideration in four other states. Early evidence from California and Colorado suggests that ITIN inclusion could prove a highly effective means of reaching poor children with the benefits of a state EITC. Child poverty can only be attacked successfully if ITIN households receive equal access to federal and state tax credit programs. This can be accomplished if: Congress and state legislatures permit full eligibility for all EITC and CTC programs. Congress mandates reforms to the procedures for getting and keeping an ITIN that have been proposed in multiple reports to Congress by the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an internal monitor at the IRS. Immigrants’ rights advocates and other civil society organizations, with government support, undertake a multi-year campaign to encourage ITIN application and use. The IRS receives funding to support a greatly expanded ITIN program.

Policy Watch: Tax Credits for Low-Income Workers with Children

1990 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 201-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Eugene Steuerle
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Low Income ◽  
The United States ◽  
Tax Credits ◽  
Tax Credit ◽  
Dependent Care ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Equity And Efficiency ◽  
Households With Children ◽  
Child Tax Credit

The most important tax credits available to low-income households with children are the earned income tax credit (EITC), the child tax credit, and the child and dependent care tax credit (hereafter, child-care credit). Only the EITC and the child-care credit exist in current law in the United States. This note will discuss some equity and efficiency implications of four commonly stated purposes of these credits within the tax/transfer system: greater progressivity, adjustments for the presence of children, greater choice among goods and services, and greater work incentives for low-income individuals.

‘To see oursels as ithers see us’: Reflections on Scottish Independence from the United States

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Euan Hague ◽  
Alan Mackie
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Us ◽  
Scottish Independence ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Scottish Diaspora

The United States media have given rather little attention to the question of the Scottish referendum despite important economic, political and military links between the US and the UK/Scotland. For some in the US a ‘no’ vote would be greeted with relief given these ties: for others, a ‘yes’ vote would be acclaimed as an underdog escaping England's imperium, a narrative clearly echoing America's own founding story. This article explores commentary in the US press and media as well as reporting evidence from on-going interviews with the Scottish diaspora in the US. It concludes that there is as complex a picture of the 2014 referendum in the United States as there is in Scotland.

scholarly journals Trends in educational mobility: How does China compare to Europe and the United States?

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-240
Author(s):  
Rob J Gruijters ◽  
Tak Wing Chan ◽  
John Ermisch
Keyword(s):  
Educational Opportunity ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Standards ◽  
Educational Mobility ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Economic Boom ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Large Decline ◽  
Inequality Of Educational Opportunity

Despite an impressive rise in school enrolment rates over the past few decades, there are concerns about growing inequality of educational opportunity in China. In this article, we examine the level and trend of educational mobility in China, and compare them to the situation in Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA. Educational mobility is defined as the association between parents’ and children’s educational attainment. We show that China’s economic boom has been accompanied by a large decline in relative educational mobility chances, as measured by odds ratios. To elaborate, relative rates of educational mobility in China were, by international standards, quite high for those who grew up under state socialism. For the most recent cohorts, however, educational mobility rates have dropped to levels that are comparable to those of European countries, although they are still higher than the US level.

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