Working Paper: NBER ID: w28086
Authors: Elizabeth Linos; Allen Prohofsky; Aparna Ramesh; Jesse Rothstein; Matt Unrath
Abstract: The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) distributes more than $60 billion to over 20 million low-income families annually. Nevertheless, an estimated one-fifth of eligible households do not claim it. We ran six pre-registered, large-scale field experiments to test whether “nudges” could increase EITC take-up (N=1million). Despite varying the content, design, messenger, and mode of our messages, we find no evidence that they affected households’ likelihood of filing a tax return or claiming the credit. We conclude that even the most behaviorally informed low-touch outreach efforts cannot overcome the barriers faced by low-income households who do not file returns.
Keywords: EITC; nudges; field experiments; takeup; low-income households
JEL Codes: D91; H24; H26; I38
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Barriers faced by low-income households (I32) | EITC claiming (H26) |
| Barriers faced by low-income households (I32) | Tax filing (H26) |
| Nudges (D91) | EITC claiming (H26) |
| Nudges (D91) | Tax filing (H26) |