Taxing the poor: Doing damage to the truly disadvantaged

Taxing the Poor: Doing Damage to the Truly Disadvantaged

Volumn , Issue , 2011, Pages

  Newman, Katherine S ^a   O'Brien, Rourke L ^b,c  

^a JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^c NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 83655176413     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: None     Document Type: Book

References (201)

1. See Tax Foundation, State Sales, Gasoline, Cigarette, and Alcohol Tax Rates by State, 2000-2010 (Washington, DC), http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/245.html, accessed September 3, 2010.
2. Only 24 percent of the nation's private and 12 percent of its public four-year university graduates have loans of this size.
3. See Sandy Baum and Patricia Steele, Who Borrows Most? Bachelor's Degree Recipients with High Levels of Student Debt (College Board, 2010), http:// advocacy.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/Trends-Who-Borrows-Most-Brief.pdf, accessed May 18, 2010.
4. Only debtors who can prove that repayment would cause "undue hardship" can get rid of education loans of this kind, and it is very hard to qualify, even for someone like Bea, because Congress has never defined what the term undue hardship actually means.
5. FinAid, Low Odds of a Successful Undue Hardship Discharge (Mark Kantrowitz, Publisher), http://www.finaid.org/questions/bankruptcy.phtml, accessed May 18, 2010.
6. These benefits will disappear as a source of household income when the children reach eighteen.
7. For the distribution of poverty in the United States by region over time
8. see U.S. Census Bureau, Distribution of the Poor by Region, Table 17, Historical Poverty Tables (Washington, DC), http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/historical/people.html, accessed September 3, 2010.
9. The distribution of poor households has been remarkably stable over the past four decades. For the number of poor children by region
10. see National Center for Children in Poverty, 50-State Demographics Wizard (child poverty data compiled using microdata from the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey) (Washington, DC), http://www.nccp.org/tools/demographics, accessed May 24, 2010.
11. We excluded Delaware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia in our definition of southern states.
12. Although all of the other names of interviewees in this book are real and their identities accurately described, this individual requested anonymity. Hence we have changed the name of the town where she lives and other identifying details.
13. See Isaac William Martin, Ajay K. Mehrotra, and Monica Prasad, "The Thunder of History: The Origins and Development of the New Fiscal Sociology," in The New Fiscal Sociology: Taxation in Comparative and Historical Perspective, ed.
14. Isaac William Martin, Ajay K. Mehrotra, and Monica Prasad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
15. See especially Kimberly Morgan and Monica Prasad, "The Origins of Tax Systems: A French-American Comparison," American Journal of Sociology 114:5 (2009): 1350-94.
16. For example, I. W. Martin, The Permanent Tax Revolt: How the Property Tax Transformed American Politics (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008).
17. Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
18. Kimberly J. Morgan and Monica Prasad, "The Origins of Tax Systems: A French-American Comparison," American Journal of Sociology 114:5 (2009): 1350-94.
19. Robin L. Einhorn, American Taxation, American Slavery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 228.
20. Robin L. Einhorn, "Species of Property: The American Property-Tax Uniformity Clauses Reconsidered," Journal of Economic History 61:4 (2001).
21. Einhorn, American Taxation, p. 209.
22. In "Species of Property" Einhorn argues convincingly that as of 1818 Illinois should be added to this list because of the large presence of slaves in what was formally a "free" state.
23. See "The History of Taxation," published by the Tax History Project, http://www.taxanalysts.com/museum/1861-1865.htm, accessed May 24, 2010.
24. Rose Razaghian, "Financing the Civil War: The Confederacy's Financial Strategy," Yale International Center for Finance Working Paper 04-45 (2005), p. 1.
25. Elna C. Green, ed., Before the New Deal: Social Welfare in the South, 1830-1930 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999), p. xiv.
26. J. Mills Thornton III, "Fiscal Policy and the Failure of Radical Reconstruction in the Lower South," in Region, Race and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward, ed. J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson, 349-94 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 368.
27. C. V. Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971), p. 59.
28. April 26, 1890; cited in Woodward, p. 59.
29. Woodward, p. 61-62.
30. Eric Foner, Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction (New York: Knopf, 2005), p. 204.
31. Eric Foner, Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983), p. 70.
32. J. Morgan Kousser, "Progressivism-For Middle-Class Whites Only: North Carolina Education, 1880-1910," Journal of Southern Economic History 46:2 (1980): 169-95.
33. Einhorn, "Species of Property," p. 248.
34. Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, The Race between Education and Technology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008).
35. During this period the use of the general property tax to fund government was under fire because of its inequity and inefficiency, especially in the North where tax rates were high.
36. See Edwin R. A. Seligman, "The General Property Tax," Political Science Quarterly 5:1 (1890): 24-64.
37. Loathing of the property tax contributed to the movement for a federal income tax by citizens who hoped those revenues could be used to ease the high taxes levied by state and local governments.
38. See Kimberly J. Morgan and Monica Prasad, "The Origins of Tax Systems: A French-American Comparison," American Journal of Sociology 114:5 (2009): 1350-94.
39. Also see Alan Furman Westin, "The Populist Movement and the Campaign of 1896," Journal of Politics 15:1 (1953): 3-41.
40. Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (New York: Mariner Books, 2006).
41. Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago 1919-1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
42. Roger Biles, The South and the New Deal (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1994), p. 58.
43. Gavin Wright, "The New Deal and the Modernization of the South," Federal History Journal 2 (2010): 58-73.
44. Biles, p. 23-24.
45. During the early 1930s, a group of Columbia University professors conducted a study on the debates over sales tax legislation in a number of states, based on letters, news dispatches, and interviews with state officials, businessmen, and other interested parties.
46. See R. Haig and C. Shoup, The Sales Taxes in the American States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934).
47. The Atlanta Constitution, February 3, 1934.
48. Haig and Shoup, p. 200.
49. A central motivating force in North Carolina for enacting sales taxes was the $15 million in debt that the state had accumulated, in large part to finance education. The state provided almost all school operating costs, with little support from local property taxes. See Haig and Shoup.
50. Haig and Shoup, p. 186-87.
51. "Exemptions Fail to End Tax Fight; Early Vote Seen," Washington Post, March 22, 1932.
52. "The Proposed Sales Tax," New Journal and Guide, December 9, 1933.
53. Carl Shoup and Louis Haimoff , "The Sales Tax," Columbia Law Review 34:5 (1934): 809-30. See p. 812.
54. As of 1955, a number of states, including California, Connecticut, Maryland, and Maine, had excluded food for home consumption from the sales tax.
55. See J. F. Due, "The Nature and Structure of Sales Taxation," Vanderbilt Law Review 9 (1955): 123.
56. For dates on food exemptions since 1975
57. see C. A. Agostini, The Effect of Sales Tax Rates on Food Exemptions, Social Science Research Network Working Paper, 2004, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=964929, accessed May 24, 2010.
58. Corporate and individual income taxes were also enacted in the gilded age of the 1920s and 1930s, but owing to the comparatively weaker development of industry in the South and the lower income structure of its people, these taxes generated less revenue there than they did in the eastern, western, and midwestern states. For dates of adoption of major taxes by state
59. see Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, Significant Features of Fiscal Federalism, vol. 1. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1994).
60. See Katherine Newman and Elisabeth Jacobs, Brothers' Keepers? The Limits of Solidarity from the New Deal to the Second Gilded Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).
61. Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White (New York: Norton, 2005).
62. Lee J. Alson and Joseph P Ferrie, Southern Paternalism and the American Welfare State: Economics, Politics, and Institutions in the South, 1865-1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 70.
63. "Table 7-13. Maximum AFDC/TANF Benefit for a Family of Three (Parent with Two Children) July 1970-January 2003," in The Green Book (Washington, DC: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means, 2003), http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/greenbook2003/Section7.pdf, accessed May 24, 2010.
64. As Lizbeth Cohen details in A Consumer's Republic, high property taxes do not always translate into a well-funded public sector. In the two decades immediately following WWII, New Jersey was one of three states that lacked both an income and a sales tax; the state therefore posted the lowest statewide revenue generated per capita in the country. The public sector functioned mostly on revenue generated from the nation's highest property tax, which was raised and spent at the local level, yielding tremendous inequality in public sector spending between localities, particularly in education.
65. See Lizbeth Cohen, A Consumer's Republic (New York: Knopf, 2003), p. 231-34.
66. Gavin Wright, Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy since the Civil War (New York: Basic Books, 1986).
67. U.S. Census Bureau, Poverty, by Region, Table 9, Historical Poverty Tables (Washington, DC), http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/historical/people.html, accessed May 24, 2010.
68. State of Arkansas, Bureau of Legislative Research, A Summary of Legislative Supermajority Requirements, Report #05-101 (2005), http://staging.arkleg.state.ar.us/Policy/docs/Project%2005-101.pdf, accessed May 24, 2010.
69. The state sales tax rate is 6.0 percent, but an additional tax of up to 5.5 percent in some jurisdictions brings the total to as much as 11.5 percent.
70. See Tax Foundation, Comparison of State and Local Retail Sales Taxes, 2010 (Washington, DC: 2010), http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/Content/PDF/state_local_sales_tax.pdf, accessed May 24, 2010.
71. Bert Waisanen, State Tax and Expenditure Limits, 2008 (Washington, DC: National Conference of State Legislatures), http://www.ncsl.org/IssuesResearch/BudgetTax/StateTaxandExpenditureLimits2008/tabid/12633/Default.aspx, accessed May 24, 2010.
72. Brian Knight, "Supermajority Voting Requirements for Tax Increases: Evidence from the States," Journal of Public Economics 76 (2000): 41-67.
73. Center for Fiscal Responsibility, States with a Supermajority Requirement to Raise Taxes (Washington, DC), http://www.fiscalaccountability.org/index.php?content=supersub1, accessed May 24, 2010.
74. Daniel Mullins and Bruce Wallin, "Tax and Expenditure Limitations: Introduction and Overview," Public Budgeting and Finance (Winter 2004): 2-15.
75. Bruce P. Ely and Howard P. Walthall, "State Constitutional Limitations on Taxing and Spending: A Comparison of the Alabama Constitution of 1901 to Its Counterparts," Cumberland Law Review 33 (2002): 463.
76. See knightsims.com, accessed May 24, 2010. The Web site is maintained by plaintiffs in Knight-Sims v. Alabama. The contact is Birmingham, AL, Attorney James U. Blacksher, counsel for the plaintiffs.
77. Rebecca Walker, "After 26 Years, Knight-Sims vs. Alabama Case Settled at Last," Flora-Ala Student Newspaper, February 22, 2007, http://media.www.florala.net/media/storage/paper293/news/2007/02/22/News/After.26.Years.KnightsSims.V.Alabama.Case.Settled.At.Last-2745817-page2.shtml
78. and www.knightsims.com, accessed May 24, 2010.
79. What follows is a summary of the historical background compiled by the plaintiffs, relying in part on the expert testimony and submitted affidavits of Alabama historians Dr. J. Mills Thornton, Dr. Robert J. Norrell, and Dr. Henry J. McKiven.
80. Knight-Sims v. Alabama Plaintiffs' Post-Trial Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law Regarding Vestiges of Segregation in Alabama's Property Tax System. Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, Southern Division, paragraph 60.
81. Wayne Flint, Alabama in the Twentieth Century (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004), p. 17.
82. According to the plaintiffs in Knight-Sims v. Alabama (Knight-Sims v. Alabama Plaintiffs' Post-Trial Proposed Findings of Fact, paragraph 96), "the following sections in the 1901 Alabama Constitution are traceable to the State's de jure system of racial segregation and discrimination against black citizens with respect to the revenues and funds required to provide them equal access to public education:
83. "Ala. Const. § 214, as amended, which limits the millage rate of ad valorem taxation the Alabama Legislature may place on taxable property;
84. "Ala. Const. § 215, as amended, which limits the millage rate of ad valorem taxation counties may place on taxable property;
85. "Ala. Const. § 216, as amended, which limits the millage rate of ad valorem taxation municipalities may place on taxable property;
86. "Ala. Const. § 269, as amended, which limits the millage rate of ad valorem taxation counties may place on taxable property for the benefit of public education, and which further requires approval of these property taxes by the voters of the county in a referendum election."
87. See Susan Pace Hamill, An Argument for Tax Reform Based on Judeo-Christian Ethics and Susan Pace Hamill, Constitutional Reform in Alabama: A Necessary Step Toward Achieving a Fair and Efficient Tax Structure, 33 Cumb. L. Rev. 437 (2002-2003).
88. B. G. Knight, "Supermajority Voting Requirements for Tax Increases: Evidence from the States," Journal of Public Economics 76:1 (2000): 41-67.
89. John Charles Bradbury and Joseph M. Johnson, "Do Supermajority Rules Limit or Enhance Majority Tyranny? Evidence from the US States, 1960-1997," Public Choice 127 (2006): 437-49.
90. D. R. Mullins and B. A. Wallin, "Tax and Expenditure Limitations: Introduction and Overview," Public Budgeting & Finance 24 (2004): 2-15, p. 5.
91. Isaac Martin, The Permanent Tax Revolt: How Property Tax Transformed American Politics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), p. 52.
92. See A. Alesina and E. L. Glaeser, Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
93. Isaac Martin, personal communication, April 2010.
94. Timothy Conlan, From New Federalism to Devolution: Twenty-five Years of Intergovernmental Reform (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998).
95. Max Sawicky, "The New American Devolution: Problems and Prospects," in The End of Welfare? Consequences of Federal Devolution for the Nation, ed. Max Sawicky, p. 3-24 (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1999).
96. Elizabeth Kolbert, "The 1992 Campaign: The Governor: Clinton in Arkansas-A Special Report: An Early Loss Cast Clinton as a Leader by Consensus," New York Times, September 28, 1992.
97. Peter Applebome, "Clinton Record in Leading Arkansas: Successes, but Not Without Criticism," New York Times, December 22, 1991.
98. "Arkansas Overhauling Its Education Program," New York Times, November 20, 1983.
99. Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, January 27, 1991, Editorial.
100. Based on findings of "a personal interview research survey conducted among 2,195 men and women 18 years or over living in private households in the continental United States . . . during the period March 15 through April 8, 1972." Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, Public Opinion and Taxes (Washington, DC: May 1972), http://www.library.unt.edu/gpo/acir/Reports/survey/S-1.pdf, accessed September 3, 2010.
101. See chapter 5 for data discussion on the composition of regional tax revenues.
102. C. Cornwell, D. B. Mustard, and D. J. Sridhar, "The Enrollment Effects of Merit-Based Financial Aid: Evidence from Georgia's HOPE Program," Journal of Labor Economics 24:761-86 (2006).
103. Lora Cohen-Vogel et al., "The Spread of Merit Based College Aid," Education Policy 22:3 (2008): 339-62.
104. In 2003, Riley proposed a 22 percent increase in state taxes to fund improvements in schools. It was soundly defeated, mainly because agribusinesses opposed to increased taxation ran commercials arguing it would be bad for African Americans.
105. See David Halbfinger, "G.O.P. Chief's Idea for Raising Alabama: Taxes," New York Times, June 4, 2003, http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/04/us/gop-chief-s-idea-for-raising-alabama-taxes.html, accessed September 3, 2010.
106. See Carol Stack, Call to Home: African Americans Reclaim the Rural South (New York: Basic Books, 1996).
107. Jing Fang, Shantha Madhavan, and Michael H. Alderman, "The Association between Birthplace and Mortality from Cardiovascular Causes among Black and White Residents of New York City," New England Journal of Medicine 335 (1996): 1545-51.
108. We generally define "the South" as including Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas.
109. Alemayehu Bishaw and Jessica Smega, Income, Earnings, and Poverty Data from the 2007 American Community Survey (Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, 2008), http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/acs-09.pdf, accessed on May 24, 2010.
110. Greg J. Duncan, W. Jean Yeung, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, and Judith R. Smith, "How Much Does Childhood Poverty Affect the Life Chances of Children?" American Sociological Review 63(3): (June 1998): 406-23.
111. For a more detailed discussion of the impact of childhood poverty on life chances, including health and educational achievement
112. see Greg Duncan and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Consequences of Growing Up Poor (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997).
113. See Mark Nord, Margaret Andrews, and Steven Carolson, Houehold Food Security in the United States, 2005, Economic Research Report No. ERR-29 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2006), http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/ERR29/ERR29i.pdf, accessed on May 24, 2010.
114. India Together, Infant Mortality across India (Bangalore), http://www.indiatogether.org/photo/2003/inf-mortal.htm, accessed July 10, 2009.
115. Information on the infant and adult complications of low birth weight is provided in the March of Dimes fact sheets for professionals and researchers, available at http://www.marchofdimes.com/professionals/14332_1153.asp#head5, accessed July 12, 2009.
116. See Kristin Luker, Dubious Conceptions: The Politics of Teenage Pregnancy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).
117. Teenage pregnancy and out-of-wedlock childbearing should not be conflated, as Kristin Luker's work in Dubious Conceptions makes clear. A lot of teen moms are married, and this may be more prevalent in the South than elsewhere. Still, being a teen mom is likely to have an impact on the educational attainment of mothers and their young spouses.
118. See S. McLanahan and G. D. Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994) for an extensive discussion of this issue.
119. The health status of children in the South has attracted the attention of epidemiologists who are now focusing more attention on the role of regional disparities.
120. For more on this topic
121. see Jeffrey Goldhagen et al., "The Health Status of Southern Children: A Neglected Regional Disparity," Pediatrics 116:6 (2005): 746-53, available online at http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/116/6/e746, accessed May 24, 2010.
122. Heart disease is perhaps less regionally concentrated, but it still exhibits a worrying level within the southern region. New York and Missouri join the roster of states like Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kentucky in exhibiting high rates of death due to heart disease.
123. See statehealthfacts.org (Menlo Park, CA: Kaiser Family Foundation),
124. http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparemaptable.jsp?ind=77&cat=2 accessed July 12, 2009.
125. See statehealthfacts.org (Menlo Park, CA: Kaiser Family Foundation),
126. http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparemaptable.jsp?ind=92&cat=2, accessed July 12, 2009.
127. See Katherine S. Newman, A Different Shade of Gray: Midlife and Beyond in the Inner City (New York: New Press, 2003)
128. for a discussion of the emergence of chronic disease associated with the elder years among the middle-aged residents of inner city New York. She notes that stress and poor medical care contribute to premature aging, which entails the emergence of life-threatening illness much earlier than is typical of more-affluent populations.
129. The research done by the MacArthur Foundation's Network on Social Economic Status and Health has made this point many times over in its ground-breaking work on inequality and health disparities.
130. For an overview, consult MacArthur Foundation (Chicago, IL), http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.951947/k.11B4/Research_Networks__Socioeconomic_Status_and_Health.htm, accessed July 12, 2009.
131. For data comparing health outcomes across states for blacks, see appendix II.
132. See appendix II for data on health outcomes by race for each state.
133. See Goldhagen et al., "The Health Status of Southern Children: A Neglected Regional Disparity," Pediatrics 116:6 (December 2005): 746-53, online at http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/116/6/e746, accessed July 12, 2009.
134. See, for example, I. Kawachi, B. P. Kennedy, and R. G. Wilkinson, Income Inequality and Health (New York: New Press, 1999).
135. A. Deaton and D. Lubotsky, "Mortality, Inequality and Race in American Cities and States," Social Science & Medicine 56 (2003): 1139-53.
136. See M. Ash and D. E. Robinson, "Inequality, Race, and Mortality in U.S. Cities: A Political and Econometric Review," Social Science & Medicine 68:11 ( June 2009): 1914 -1917.
137. Richard Murnane and Frank Levy, Teaching the New Basic Skills: Principles for Educating Children to Thrive in a Changing Economy (New York: Free Press, 1996).
138. For a thorough account of this change as it unfolded throughout the twentieth century
139. see especially Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, The Race between Education and Technology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008).
140. Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007), p. 27.
141. Bureau of Justice Statistics. U.S. Department of Justice. Crime Trends, http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/dataonline/Search/Crime/Crime.cfm, accessed September 3, 2010.
142. U.S. Census Bureau, The 2010 Statistical Abstract (Law Enforcement, Courts and Prisons: Crime and Crime Rates), www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/law_enforcement_courts_prisons/crimes_and_crime_rates.html, accessed May 24, 2010.
143. Besiki Kutateladze, Is America Really So Punitive? Exploring a Continuum of U.S. State Criminal Justice Policies (El Paso, TX: Lfb Scholarly Publishing, 2009).
144. Richard Freeman, "The Economics of Crime," in Handbook of Labor Economics, ed. Orley Ashenfelter and David Cards, vol. 3, chap. 52 (Amsterdam: North Holland Publishers, 1999)
145. and Richard B. Freeman, "Why Do So Many Young American Men Commit Crimes and What Might We Do about It?" Journal of Economic Perspectives 10:1 (1996): 25-42.
146. See Kutateladze.
147. The data used for estimation were updated to 2008 in collaboration with Kevin Hassett and colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute. We summarize the estimation procedure below; for additional details
148. see Kevin Hassett and Anne Moore, How Do Tax Policies Affect Low Income Workers? American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research Working Paper no. 121, December 2005, http://www.aei.org/docLib/20051208_WP121.pdf.
149. See National Bureau of Economic Research, TAXSIM Related Files at the NBER (Cambridge, MA), http://www.nber.org/~taxsim, accessed May 24, 2010
150. and Daniel Feenberg and Elisabeth Coutts, "An Introduction to the TAXSIM Model," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 12:1 (Winter 1993).
151. Alaska has been excluded from this analysis because of its complicated local sales tax structure and the variation in payments to residents from the Alaska Permanent Fund (oil profits).
152. For a review of the recent literature on crime, income, and labor markets
153. see David B. Mustard, "How Do Labor Markets Affect Crime? New Evidence on an Old Puzzle," in Handbook on the Economics of Crime, ed. B. L. Benson and P. R. Zimmerman (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010).
154. In alternative model specifications, we used a more narrow measure of state spending that aggregated all "social spending," including health, education, and welfare. The choice of control had no substantive impact on our results.
155. See John Robert Warren, "State-Level High School Completion Rates: Concepts, Measures, and Trends," Education Policy Analysis Archives, http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/viewFile/156/282, accessed May 24, 2010.
156. John Robert Warren, "State-Level High School Completion Rates: Concepts, Measures, and Trends," Education Policy Analysis Archives, http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/viewFile/156/282, accessed May 24, 2010.
157. Sara Mclanahan and Christine Percheski, "Family Structure and the Reproduction of Inequality," Annual Review of Sociology 34 (2008): 257-76.
158. Susan Mayer, What Money Can't Buy: Family Income and Children's Life Chances (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).
159. Christopher Jencks and Susan Mayer, "The Social Consequences of Growing Up in a Poor Neighborhood," in Inner-City Poverty in the United States, ed. Laurence Lynn and Michael McGeary, p. 111-86 (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 1990).
160. David Harding, Living the Drama: Community, Conflict and Culture among Inner City Boys (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).
161. G. Duncan, P. Morris, and C. Rodrigues, Does Money Really Matter? Estimating Impacts of Family Income on Children's Achievement with Data from Social Policy Experiments (manuscript, 2008) (New York: MDRC), p. 7-8.
162. Measured through reports from parents or teachers or more objective measures like test scores.
163. Morris et al., p. 16.
164. Randall Akee et al., "Parents' Incomes and Children's Outcomes: A Quasi-Experiment Using Transfer Payments from Casino Profits," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 2:1 (2010): 85-115.
165. The children were ages nine, eleven, and thirteen; they were followed annually until they turned sixteen and then reinterviewed at nineteen and twenty-one.
166. Akee et al.
167. Gordon Dahl and Lance Lochner, The Impact of Family Income on Child Achievement: Evidence from the Earned Income Tax Credit, Working Paper 145999 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2008).
168. Kathryn Edin et al. Investing in Enduring Resources with the Earned Income Tax Credit. Unpublished manuscript, Harvard University (2010).
169. See, for example, Adam Drewnowski and S. E. Specter, "Poverty and Obesity: The Role of Energy Density and Energy Costs," American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 79:1 ( January 2004): 6-16.
170. For a primer on TANF financing and eligibility
171. see Policy Basics: An Introduction to TANF (Washington, DC: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2009), http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=936, accessed August 11, 2009.
172. Liz Schott and Zachary Levinson, TANF Benefits Are Low and Have Not Kept Pace with Inflation (Washington, DC: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2008), http://www.cbpp.org/pdf/11-24-08tanf.pdf, accessed August 11, 2009.
173. Missouri Economic Research and Information Center (MERIC), State Cost of Living Indices for the 1st quarter of 2009, http://www.missourieconomy.org/indicators/cost_of_living/index.stm, accessed August 10, 2009.
174. For original data on city cost of living indices
175. see Council for Community and Economic Research, ACCRA Cost of Living Index (Arlington, VA), http://www.coli.org/default.asp, accessed August 10, 2009.
176. In 2004-2005, state government provided 46.9 percent of education revenues.
177. Local governments provided 44.0 percent, and the federal government provided 9.2 percent.
178. See U.S. Department of Education, Digest of Education Statistics, Table 162, http://nces.ed.gov/Programs/digest, accessed September 3, 2010.
179. For a discussion of kindergartenthrough-twelfth-grade education financing
180. see K. Carey and M. Roza, School Funding's Tragic Flaw (Seattle: University of Washington, Center on Reinventing Public Education and Education Sector, 2008).
181. New America Foundation, Federal Education Budget Project, Per Pupil Expenditure (2007), http://febp.newamerica.net/k12/rankings/ppexpend07, accessed on May 24, 2010.
182. For a detailed discussion of trends in the departure of affluent whites to private schools in southern states since the late 1960s
183. see Stephen H. Wainscott, "Consequences of Southern School Desegregation: Myth and Reality," in The Disappearing South: Studies in Regional Change and Continuity, ed. Robert P. Steed, Laurence W. Moreland, and Tod A. Baker (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990).
184. Susan Mayer and Leonard Lopoo, "Government Spending and Intergenerational Mobility," Journal of Public Economics 92 (2008): 139-58.
185. See Katherine Newman and Elisabeth Jacobs, Who Cares? Public Ambivalence and Government Activism from the New Deal to the Second Gilded Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010)
186. and also see B. Steensland, The Failed Welfare Revolution: America's Struggle over Guaranteed Income Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).
187. While much federal spending in the South is in the form of military bases and other defense appropriations, the states of the old Confederacy generally receive as much as the Northeast in terms of retirement, disability, health, and welfare spending despite paying much less in the way of federal taxes.
188. See Flow of Federal Funds to States (Washington, DC: Northeast-Midwest Institute), http://www.nemw.org/index.php/flow-of-federal-funds, and their "Table 2.
189. Per-Capita Federal Spending: Fiscal 2008," http://www.nemw.org/images/fedspend2.pdf, accessed May 24, 2010.
190. Pedro Carneiro and James Heckman, "Human Capital Policy," in Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies? ed. J. Heckman and A. Kruger (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003).
191. Our data for mortality, for example, cover years 1982 to 2005, so we averaged tax burdens over that period; property crime and violent crime covered years 1982 to 2006, and teenage pregnancy covered years 1988 to 2000.
192. For a detailed treatment of this issue see Katherine Newman and Elisabeth Jacobs, Who Cares? Public Ambivalence and Government Activism from the New Deal to the Second Gilded Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).
193. Andrea Campbell, What the Social Security Experience Tells Us about Taxes Americans Can Embrace (Washington, DC: Scholar's Strategy Network, January 2010), http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/pdfs/Taxes_Americans_Can%20Embrace-Andrea_Campbell.pdf.
194. T. Skocpol, "Targeting within Universalism: Politically Viable Policies to Combat Poverty in the United States," in The Urban Underclass, ed. C. Jencks and P. E. Peterson (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1991), p. 411-36.
195. Income taxes require lump-sum payments by the self-employed and the very wealthy, but for most Americans the process of collecting the income tax is exactly like social security: it is withheld from every paycheck.
196. Lawrence Jacobs, Escaping the Fiscal Death Spiral and Overcoming Anti-Tax Conservatism (Washington, DC: Scholar's Strategy Network, January 2010), http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/pdfs/Escaping_the_Fiscal_Death_Spiral-Lawrence_Jacobs.pdf.
197. See also Catherine Rampell, "Many See the VAT Option as a Cure for Deficits," New York Times, December 10, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/business/11vat.html, accessed September 3, 2010.
198. Nicholas Johnson and Erica Williams, Some States Scaling Back Tax Credits for Low-Income Families (Washington, DC: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2010), http://www.cbpp.org/files/4-29-10sfp.pdf, accessed May 24, 2010.
199. Pedro Carneiro and James Heckman, "Human Capital Policy," in Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies? ed. J. Heckman and A. Kruger (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003).
200. Y. Yilmaz, S. Hoo, M. Nagowski, K. Rueben, and R. Tannenwald, Measuring Fiscal Disparities across the US States: A Representative Revenue System/Representative Expenditure System Approach, Fiscal Year 2002, Working Paper 06-2 (Boston: Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, New England Public Policy Center, 2006).
201. Just as the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington adjusts Medicare reimbursement rates using regional cost-of-living scales.