Jacob Bastian
Assistant Professor of Economics
Rutgers University
Department of Economics
New Jersey Hall
75 Hamilton Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1248
Email: jacob.bastian@rutgers.edu Phone: 848.932.8652 Rutgers Department Website
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Assistant Professor of Economics
Rutgers University
Department of Economics
New Jersey Hall
75 Hamilton Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1248
Email: jacob.bastian@rutgers.edu Phone: 848.932.8652 Rutgers Department Website
Short Bio:
I am an Assistant Professor of Economics at Rutgers University. I am serving as a Senior Economist in the Council of Economic Advisers in 2023-2024. I visited Princeton University during 2022-2023.
My research focuses on how public policy can reduce poverty, increase economic opportunity, and encourage egalitarian social attitudes, while also identifying unintended consequences. Much of my current research looks at the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC). My research shows that the EITC helped lead to the rise of working mothers in the 1970s, improved the education and employment outcomes of children of EITC recipients, changed social attitudes about the role of women in society, had positive effects on marriage and fertility, decreased overall time spent between mothers and children (though not quality time devoted to child investment), has larger effects in rural and economically distressed areas, and helps mothers move out of rural and economically distressed areas to places with more economic opportunity. Increased working also led these mothers to become more politically conservative.
I also have research examining the impact of a permanent version of the 2021 CTC expansion. I find that child poverty would decline by 3 million (or about 28%) and deep child poverty would decline by 1.5 million (or about 41%). These decreases in poverty are net of the 350,000 to 370,000 parents that would choose to stop working and spend more time raising their children. This policy would lead to an unprecedented poverty decrease: larger than from the 2022 CTC and EITC combined. Comparison of my approach with other CTC research that finds much larger employment effects and smaller effects on poverty and deep poverty here and here. I propose and evaluate three alternate CTC expansions here.
I’ve received grants from the Smith Richardson Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, and Upjohn Institute to continue my research. My dissertation was chosen as a winner of the 2017 Outstanding Doctoral Dissertations in Government Finance and Taxation by the National Tax Association.
My research has been featured as the AEA Chart of the Week, in the New York Times (and in this NYT piece), CNBC, The Economist, Brookings Institution, Tax Policy Center, VoxEU, Marginal Revolution, Mother Jones, National Review, and National Affairs.