HKS Affiliated Authors

Excerpt

Economic Strategy for Higher Wages and Expanded Labor Participation. Jason Furman, Martin Feldstein, 2019, Paper, "We propose two alternative policy options for promoting increased earnings and employment of low-income households: expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) among childless workers, and implementing a wage subsidy for low-income workers that would be administered through employers. The EITC is based on household income and administered as a tax credit, while the subsidy based on hourly wages would require no filing or administrative effort by workers. We compare and contrast the costs and benefits of these two approaches to raising wages. Our two policy options are meant as part of a response to the sluggish income growth at the bottom of the distribution over the past several decades." Link