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The Impact of Family Income on Child Achievement: Evidence from the Earned Income Tax Credit

Author Info

  • Gordon B. Dahl

    ()

    (University of California San Diego)

  • Lance Lochner

    ()

    (University of Western Ontario)

Abstract

Past estimates of the effect of family income on child development have often been plagued by endogeneity and measurement error. In this paper, we use an instrumental variables strategy to estimate the causal effect of income on children's math and reading achievement. Our identification derives from the large, non-linear changes in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) over the last two decades. The largest of these changes increased family income by as much as 20%, or approximately $2,100, between 1993 and 1997. Using a panel of roughly 4,500 children matched to their mothers from National Longitudinal Survey of Youth datasets allows us to address problems associated with unobserved heterogeneity, endogenous transitory income shocks, and measurement error in income. Our baseline estimates imply that a $1,000 increase in income raises combined math and reading test scores by 6% of a standard deviation in the short-run. Test gains are larger for children from disadvantaged families and are robust to a variety of alternative specifications.

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File URL: http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Dahl_Lochner_2011_impact-family-income.pdf
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File URL: http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~gdahl/papers/children-and-EITC.pdf
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Paper provided by Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group in its series Working Papers with number 2011-022.

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Date of creation: Jun 2011
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Publication status: Forthcoming in American Economic Review
Handle: RePEc:hka:wpaper:2011-022
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Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education
  • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty

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  1. Les enfants, premières victimes de la crise économique en France
    by david.marguerit@gmail.com (David Marguerit) in BS Initiative on 2014-12-04 08:51:07
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