The EITC in rural and economically distressed areas: More bang per buck?

Numerous papers show that Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) expansions have increased maternal labor supply, but little is known about how this effect differs by geography or metropolitan status. Using various datasets and exploiting several EITC expansions, I find that the EITC consistently had larger positive effects on the labor supply of unmarried mothers in rural and economically distressed areas. Among married mothers, I find small negative effects in suburban and urban areas and small positive effects in rural areas. I also replicate and extend previous EITC research to show that these effects hold for EITC expansions spanning 1975 to the 2010s.