Description/Abstract
Unpaid caregiving for adults is crucial to maintaining health, independence, and well-being at older ages. In their working years, caregivers potentially face trade-offs between unpaid caregiving and paid work. Poor households face more costly tradeoffs between paid work and caregiving because the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) – one of the nation’s largest antipoverty programs for families with children – requires recipients to work and provides benefits based on the level of earnings. This brief summarizes the findings of a study that uses data from the 2003-2019 American Time Use Survey (ATUS) to examine the effect of the EITC on unpaid caregiving for adults. The author finds that in response to more generous EITC benefits, younger recipients increase their time spent on paid work and maintain their time spent assisting adults, while older recipients maintain their time spent on paid work and increase their time spent assisting their parents.
Document Type
Research Brief
Keywords
Earned Income Tax Credit, EITC, unpaid caregiving, labor supply
Disciplines
Public Administration | Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration | Social Welfare
Date
3-11-2025
Language
English
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Emily Wiemers, Shannon Monnat, and Alyssa Kirk for editorial assistance on this brief.
Recommended Citation
Wiersma Strauss, Anna. (2025). How Does the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) Impact Time Spent Assisting Adults? Lerner Center Population Health Research Brief Series. Research Brief #130. Accessed at: https://doi.org/10.14305/rt.lerner.2025.9.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
