Work Bonus For Low-Income Men

An idea worthy of transatlantic consideration, from Right Democrat:

The Progressive's Policy Institute's Katie Campbell has a excellent idea to help lift low income males out of poverty by extending the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).

Memos to the Next President: A Work Bonus for Men
October 1st, 2008

Today, PPI released the second in a series of Memos to the Next President. In this memo, I argue that the next president should make social mobility a top priority by:

"announcing an ambitious organizing principle for a new round of progressive social initiatives: Never again will any American family with a full-time worker live in poverty."

The reformers of the 1990s brought us a bargain of mutual responsibility, one that made public assistance conditioned on work. This bargain worked and produced dramatic results. However, we focused on moving welfare recipients (mostly single mothers with children) to work. Now, we must add a new emphasis on the plight of poor men.

In this memo, I cite research that shows:

"Low-income men, especially minority men, have witnessed a two-decade trend of increased unemployment and decreased school enrollment. Some studies show that only 42 percent of working-age, poor men worked at all in 2005. Just 16 percent of this group reported working full-time year round, and only 6 percent of poor African-American men worked full-time."

In order to remedy this defect in the labor market, the next president should triple the Earned Income Tax Credit for non-custodial fathers and childless workers and once again, make work pay - this time for low-income men.

http://www.movingupusa.org/?p=70

Here are some more excerpts from the PPI Plan:

"The EITC is, quite simply, a work bonus. Its power to reduce poverty and reward work without enlarging public bureaucracy has made it the policy of choice for today’s antipoverty warriors on both the left and right. Conservative hero Ronald Reagan called the tax credit “the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress.” Echoing that sentiment, President Clinton dramatically expanded the EITC in 1993 to make American social policy “put work first”. Because our anti-poverty policies have been linked to parents with children, the effects of programs such as the EITC have had very little effect on low-income men, who generally do not have custody of children."

"Currently, the maximum federal EITC benefit is $4,536 for families with two or more children, and $2,747 for families with one child. Low-income workers who do not have children earn only $412—a much smaller benefit."

"In short, the EITC’s incentives are much less powerful for low-income fathers than for mothers. By making low-income men eligible for a more generous work credit, we can move America closer to the progressive goal of making work pay for everyone. In fact, evidence from work-support experiments suggests that an increase in the EITC for single, childless workers, including noncustodial fathers, would not only lift more families out of poverty, but would increase the presence of low-income men in the labor market by at least percent and as much as 20 percent."

http://www.ppionline.org/documents/ppi-eitc_memo.pdf