{"title":"The Earned Income Tax Credit and Food Consumption Patterns","authors":"L. McGranahan, D. Schanzenbach","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2366846","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The Earned Income Tax Credit is unique among social programs in that benefits are not paid out evenly across the calendar year. We exploit this feature of the EITC to investigate how the credit influences the food expenditure patterns of eligible households. We find that eligible households spend relatively more on healthy items including fresh fruit and vegetables, meat and poultry, and dairy products during the months when most refunds are paid.","PeriodicalId":402954,"journal":{"name":"FoodSciRN: Other Agricultural Food Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2013-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"34","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"FoodSciRN: Other Agricultural Food Science","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2366846","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 34
Abstract
The Earned Income Tax Credit is unique among social programs in that benefits are not paid out evenly across the calendar year. We exploit this feature of the EITC to investigate how the credit influences the food expenditure patterns of eligible households. We find that eligible households spend relatively more on healthy items including fresh fruit and vegetables, meat and poultry, and dairy products during the months when most refunds are paid.