Before addressing policymakers, researchers and advocates at a January 30th Capitol Hill briefing, Professor Kathryn Edin sat down with Tax Credits for Working Families to discuss her upcoming book, It’s Not Like I’m Poor: How Working Families Make Ends Meet in a Post-Welfare World.
Edin, Distinguished Bloomberg Professor in the Department of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University, and her co-authors Sarah Halpern-Meekin, Laura Tach and Jennifer Sykes provide an on-the-ground, in depth look at how the American safety net benefits low-income workers and their families. The book draws on interviews with 115 lower-income families to determine how they make use of benefits like the EITC come tax time.
Professor Edin spoke with Tax Credits for Working Families about the process of writing the It’s Not Like I’m Poor, the importance of interview-based research and the role of the EITC and other safety net programs in reducing poverty.
The four-part interview is available below:
Chapter 2: Professor Edin on interview-based research
Chapter 3: Professor Edin on the role of the EITC in reducing poverty and income inequality
Chapter 4: Professor Edin on administering the EITC in quarterly payments
A full transcript of the video is available here.