Child Tax Credits and (In)equitable State Policy Design
研究了2018至2024年间美国各州儿童税收抵免政策的设计差异，发现多数州在促进种族和经济公平方面只做出中等程度的承诺，很少全面实施增强公平的政策选项。
ABSTRACT The Child Tax Credit (CTC) is an income support policy that helps to offset the cost of raising children. Though CTC policy has long been implemented at the federal level, an increasing number of states have established their own CTCs in recent years. Crucially, states have taken very different approaches to designing CTC policies. Some states have designed CTCs in ways that promote racial and economic equity (e.g., full refundability, high benefit amounts, reduced administrative burden), while other states have incorporated aspects of CTC policy that are likely to reproduce existing racial and economic inequities (e.g., family caps, paperwork requirements). Drawing on an original policy database of state CTC bills introduced between 2018 and 2024, this study develops an innovative framework for systematically assessing the equitability of CTC policy design. Our descriptive analyses reveal that most states make moderate commitments to equity, prioritizing some aspects of it, but rarely implementing a full spectrum of equity‐enhancing policy design options. Substantively, this research advances knowledge of whether and how states design safety net policies to address racial and economic disparities. Most broadly, this work contributes to the theorization and measurement of equitable policy design.