IS THE CHILD CARE CREDIT PROGRESSIVE?

2 December 1991

journal article
research article
Published by University of Chicago Press in National Tax Journal

Vol. 44 (4.2) , 519-528
https://doi.org/10.1086/ntj41788938

Abstract

The child care credit has been widely perceived as regressive because critics claim that more credit is claimed by high-income taxpayers than low-income taypayers. The credit was changed in 1981 in an effort to make it more progressive. Nevertheless, the perception that the credit is regressive persists. This paper applies three measures of tax progressivity to a sample of taxpayer data to determine whether the child care credit was regressive during 1979-1986, and whether changes made in 1981 made it more progressive. The conclusion is that the credit was progressive over the entire period, becoming more progressive after 1981.

Keywords

This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit:

Child-Care Costs and Family Labor Supply
The Review of Economics and Statistics, 1988