Expansions in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) are associated with increases in formal employment and increases in long-term year-over-year growth in earnings for single mothers. In this study, we examine whether expansions in the EITC are likely to lead to increases in Social Security...

This paper updates a review conducted by CBO in 1996 in which the agency evaluated the academic research on the effects of changes in after-tax wages on labor supply in the U.S. economy. That review concluded that substitution elasticities were larger in absolute value than income elasticities...

Labor supply elasticities are often used to evaluate the effect of changes in tax rates on the total hours worked in the economy. Historically, married women have tended to have larger labor supply elasticities than their spouses because they were the secondary earners in a couple. However,...

While many studies have found that the EITC increases the employment rates of single mothers, no study to date has examined whether the jobs taken by single mothers as a result of the EITC incentives are “dead–end” jobs or jobs that have the potential for earnings growth. Using a panel of...

We document trends in the volatility in earnings and household incomes between 1985 and 2005 in three different data sources: administrative earnings records, the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) matched to administrative earnings records, and SIPP survey data. In all data...

Workers employed at small firms are substantially less likely to be offered health insurance than those at larger firms. Policymakers and researchers have long sought ways to increase access to employer insurance for workers at small firms but with little success. Most policy proposals and...

The federal program that provides insurance against the risk of terrorism expired at the end of 2014. Without such a program, taxpayers will face less financial risk, but some businesses will lose or drop their terrorism coverage. Last year the Congress considered legislation to reauthorize the...

Observers often cite fraud as an important contributor to high health care spending, particularly in federal programs. This report describes how CBO estimates the budgetary effects of legislative proposals to reduce fraud in Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program...

Testimony by Matthew Goldberg, Deputy Assistant Director of CBO’s National Security Division, before the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs’s Subcommittee on Health, U.S. House of Representatives.