Quote of the Day – September 19, 2012

[...] In 2011, the Child Tax Credit lifted 1.6 million children above the poverty line and 2.9 million people overall, according to the CBPP. (The Earned Income Tax Credit similarly lifted 6.3 million Americans above the poverty line, including 3.3 million children.) And as with the EITC, there’s a significant body of research linking Child Tax Credit to higher achievement.

For example, one 2011 study from Harvard and Columbia University economists examined the impact of both the EITC and CTC on low-income families. “We find that a $1,000 increase in tax credits raises students’ test scores by 6 percent of a standard deviation, using our most conservative specification,” the authors write in the study. “We show that higher scores increase students’ probability of college attendance, raise earnings, reduce teenage birth rates, and improve the quality of the neighborhood in which their students live in adulthood.” -Excerpted from, “How paying no federal income taxes helps the poor get off welfare and into work” an article by Suzy Khimm, originally published in The Washington Post.