IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/econwp/qt14678763.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Can Nudges Increase Take-up of the EITC?: Evidence from Multiple Field Experiments

Author

Listed:
  • Linos, Elizabeth
  • Prohofsky, Allen
  • Ramesh, Aparna
  • Rothstein, Jesse
  • Unrath, Matt

Abstract

The Earned Income Tax Credit distributes more than $60 billion to over 20 million low-income families annually. Nevertheless, an estimated one-fifth of eligible households do not claim it. We ran six preregistered, large-scale field experiments with 1 million observations to test whether "nudges" could increase EITC take-up. Despite varying the content, design, messenger, and mode of our messages, we find no evidence that they affected households' likelihood of filing a tax return or claiming the credit. We conclude that even the most behaviorally informed low-touch outreach efforts cannot overcome the barriers faced by low-income households who do not file returns.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Linos, Elizabeth & Prohofsky, Allen & Ramesh, Aparna & Rothstein, Jesse & Unrath, Matt, 2020. "Can Nudges Increase Take-up of the EITC?: Evidence from Multiple Field Experiments," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt14678763, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:econwp:qt14678763
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/14678763.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Li, Yuanxiang John & Hoffman, Elizabeth, 2023. "Designing an incentive mechanism for information security policy compliance: An experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 138-159.
    2. Margot I. Jackson & Ester Fanelli, 2023. "Who Uses the Social Safety Net? Trends in Public Benefit Use among American Households with Children, 1980–2020," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 706(1), pages 16-36, March.
    3. Lucie Martin & Liam Delaney & Orla Doyle, 2022. "Everyday Administrative Burdens and Inequality," Working Papers 202202, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    4. Lucie Martin & Liam Delaney & Orla Doyle, 2022. "Everyday Administrative Burdens and Inequality," Working Papers 202202, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    5. Pamela Herd & Donald Moynihan, 2023. "Fewer Burdens but Greater Inequality? Reevaluating the Safety Net through the Lens of Administrative Burden," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 706(1), pages 94-117, March.
    6. Rosenqvist, Olof & Selin, Håkan, 2023. "Explaining benefit take-up behavior – the role of incentives and habits," Working Paper Series 2023:24, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social and Behavioral Sciences;

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cdl:econwp:qt14678763. 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: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ibbrkus.html .

    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.