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Primary Submission Category: Health equity

Preventing firearm violence exposure: The role of anti-poverty policy

Authors:  Angela Bruns, Shani Buggs, Xiaoya Zhang, Nicole Kravitz-Wirtz,

Presenting Author: Angela Bruns*

Poverty and income inequality have wide-ranging and disproportionate effects on children and families living in marginalized, minoritized, and low-wealth communities. These effects include environmental, social-emotional, and behavioral health sequela that elevate the risk for, and racial/ethnic inequities in, community violence and harm. At the same time, limited but promising evidence suggests that strategies that influence structural and social determinants of health by enhancing economic opportunity and helping families avoid financial stress can prevent violence and promote well-being and intersectional racial equity beyond economic outcomes. The goal of this paper is to evaluate whether, how, and for whom two of the largest anti-poverty public policies in the United States—the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC)—affect the determinants and prevention of community violence-related outcomes among low-income families and youth who are disproportionately affected by violence and its upstream structural and social causes. We use detailed micro-level data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), a racially diverse longitudinal birth cohort study of structurally disadvantaged urban children and their families spanning tax years 1998-2017, and the “natural experiment” of variation across state, time, and family size in federal and state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC) benefits, to estimate the overall, and sex- and race/ethnicity-specific, associations of federal and state EITC and CTC benefits with adolescent exposure to neighborhood firearm homicide. At a time when policymakers are considering proposals to expand anti-poverty tax credits, this research will be among the first to contribute evidence on whether and how these policies can serve as strategies for reducing and preventing experiences of, and inequities in, violence and harm.