Tax Policy and Children’s Allowances

Harvey E. Brazer is a Professor of Economics at the University of Michigan. The first draft of this selection was written for a conference on children’s allowances, sponsored by the Citizens’ Committee for Children in October, 1967. Brazer put forth the idea of a “vanishing allowance” to meet some of the major objections to children’s allowances: the claims that equal children benefits would be inadequate and inefficient for sharply reducing American poverty. His plan combines tax reform and antipoverty objectives through the mechanism of an income-conditioned child allowance that adjusts grants to family income indirectly through the tax system.