Income and Wealth

The US is experiencing a housing affordability crisis. Families that lack access to safe, affordable and stable housing face increased risk of eviction, especially in cities, where the rent burden is most severe. Research suggests that evictions worsen material hardship, can force families into lower-quality housing in more disadvantaged neighborhoods, and erode mental health.

Childhood poverty is associated with worse health outcomes, including poor physical and cognitive development, and can adversely influence social and health outcomes in later life. While there is increasing interest in policies to address childhood poverty, limited research exists on whether current U.S. poverty alleviation policies, including the largest such program, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), improve children's health.

Our homes and neighborhoods have a powerful impact on our physical and mental health, with the potential to exacerbate chronic and acute health problems and cost the U.S. billions of dollars annually. Sherry Ahrentzen and Lynne Dearborn investigated how the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), the nation’s largest source of funding for the development and preservation of affordable rental housing, can contribute to shaping a healthier housing stock.

Building on prior conflicting studies in the International Journal of Epidemiology and the American Journal of Epidemiology, researchers Daniel F. Collin, Laura S. Shields-Zeeman, Akansha Batra, Anusha M. Vable, David H. Rehkopf, Leah Machen, and Rita Hamad evaluated seasonal variation in the health effects of the EITC among U.S. adults in this study published in Preventive Medicine.

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is one of the largest safety net programs in the United States. In 2019, the EITC reached 25 million tax filers at a total cost of $63 billion. Using variation in the federal and state EITC, Breno Braga, Fredric Blavin and Anuj Gangopadhyaya evaluated the long-term impact of EITC exposure during childhood on the health of young adults.

Many public and subsidized housing developments in the U.S. are aging and in need of significant repairs. In a new article in Health Affairs, Ingrid Gould Ellen, Kacie L. Dragan, and Sherry Glied from the P4A Research Hub at New York University Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, study the impact of a recent renovation and transfer program of public housing in New York City on the health and well-being of residents.

Approximately 16 percent of children in the U.S. live in families with incomes below the federal poverty threshold. This early-life exposure to poverty may have negative long-term health effects. In a new working paper, Hansoo Ko, Renata Howland, and Sherry Glied of the P4A Research Hub at New York University Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, estimate the causal impacts of the Supplemental Security Income program on child health outcomes and medical expenditures.

While Earned Income Tax Credit expansions are typically associated with improvements in maternal mental health, little is known about the mechanisms through which the program affects this outcome. Anuj Gangopadhyaya, Fredric Blavin, Jason Gates, and Breno Braga of the Urban Institute assess the impact of more than two decades of federal expansions in EITC credits and the implementation of state-specific EITC programs on maternal mental health in a new working paper.

California was the first state to enact a paid family leave entitlement in 2002, providing eligible workers up to six weeks of paid leave. Jessica E. Pac, Ann P. Bartel, and Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University, and Christopher J. Ruhm of the University of Virginia evaluated the effect of the policy on breastfeeding in this National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper.

William H. Dow, Anna Godoey, Christopher Lowenstein and Michael Reich released a National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper investigating whether “deaths of despair” respond to two key policies that raise incomes for low-wage workers: the minimum wage and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).

Heidi Hartmann and Will Dow are the codirectors of P4A’s new Research Hub at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and the University of California, Berkeley. We sat down with them to learn more about their research portfolio and why it matters for policymakers, advocates, and community leaders.

Last week, an editorial on the decline in US life expectancy, authored by P4A codirector Laudan Aron and Stephen Woolf, director of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University, was published in the British Medical Journal.