The IRS provides EITC Central, which hosts the Partner Toolkit, the Tax Return Preparer Toolkit, Marketing Express, and Information for the Press. EITC Central includes the latest EITC news and updates, EITC statistics, and widgets, banner ads, radio, TV PSAs, and ready-made publications and products to use in your EITC outreach campaign.

The Office of Community Services (OCS), within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, administers the Assets for Independence (AFI) Program. AFI funds community-based, faith-based, and other organizations, such as State, local and tribal government agencies that assist low-income people to become economically self-sufficient. The Assets for Independence Resource Center takes an asset-based approach to self-sufficiency and offers users many resources specific to program and agency needs, as well as resources specific to certain populations. Visit the Resource Center to learn more about IDAs, read success stories, locate a project near you, or apply for an AFI grant.

This EITC Assistant is from the IRS and provides eligibility information for the EITC in tax year 2011. By providing basic income information, the program can help in determine correct filing status, determine whether children qualify, and it can also estimate the amount of credit that someone may receive.

In 2009, the United States ranked fourteenth in college graduation rates among industrialized countries, and this research highlights ways to improve college attendance and graduation rates at 4-year colleges. This working paper, through the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis, provides a review of 38 studies on the relationship between assets and children’s education attainment. Then, authors discuss Child Development Accounts (CDAs) policies, which have been proposed as an asset approach for helping to finance college.

From the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED), the Scorecard provides a comprehensive picture of wealth, poverty and the financial security of families in the United States across all 50 states and District of Columbia. CFED offers state-by-state performance and policy measures across five issue areas: Financial Assets and Income, Businesses and Jobs, Housing and Homeownership, Health Care and Education. Across the five issue areas, CFED gives a detailed assessment of the strength of each State’s policies, recommendations to strengthen policies, and links to Resource Guides.

Using a panel of 4,500 children matched to their mothers from National Longitudinal Survey of Youth datasets, authors analyze the impact of a family’s income on child achievement to understand possible causal effects an increase in family income, such as through the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Specifically, a $1,000 increase in income is shown to equate to child gains in reading and math test scores, and the increase in scores is larger for children in more disadvantaged families.

Work supports such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, child care subsidies, and public health insurance can often help low-income working families reach self-sufficiency. Using the National Center for Children in Poverty’s Family Resource Simulator and Basic Needs Budget Calculator, authors provide an overview of the cost of living in North Dakota, which demonstrates the importance of work supports in helping low-income working families. Authors provide an assessment of how the current work support policies help families and the impact that slight increases in eligibility could have for working families.

The Brookings Institution authored this brief on the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) since the inception of the “EITC Movement” ten years ago. Authors review the past accomplishments of the EITC Movement and discuss how the Movement will continue to support working families in the future, building on lessons learned. Since the movement, the VITA program has grown considerably, and the Movement has facilitated institutional changes to highlight the use of the EITC and other tax credits to help families become economically self-sufficient.

The Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED) released a report examining the municipal governments’ new role of helping families reach economic security through wealth and asset building. The report describes five main strategies: (1) improve access to financial information, education and counseling; (2) increase access to income-boosting supports and tax credits; (3) improve the affordability, accessibility and quality of financial products and services; (4) help families build range of liquid savings and tangible assets; (4) protect consumers against the loss of income or assets in the financial marketplace. In order to implement these strategies, CFED recommends four different approaches: (1) integrate financial empowerment and asset building into city services; (2) align local, state and federal policies; (3) invest in evaluation; (4) plan for political transition. Through implementing these strategies and approaches, the municipal government aims to guide residents toward financial empowerment.

The Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings recently released a report that compared the change in geographic distribution of the low-income population to trends of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) recipients’ location. The data used to evaluate the change in geographic distribution was measured between 1999 and 2007 in the nation’s 10 largest metropolitan areas. The researchers uncovered that the distribution of low-income populations mirrored the distribution of EITC recipients. This similarity in distribution shows that EITC has operated as an effective tool to evade poverty. EITC has effectively adapted to the conditions of recession, and is an important resource for low-income populations regardless of their location.