Katherine Newman — Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor, Torrey Little Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst — speaks at the March 2016 conference, Measuring Poverty in the 21st Century.

Johns Hopkins University professor Kathryn Edin speaks at the March 2016 conference, Measuring Poverty in the 21st Century.

University of Chicago professor Bruce D. Meyer speaks at the March 2016 conference, Measuring Poverty in the 21st Century.

Johns Hopkins University professor Kathryn Edin speaks at the March 2016 conference, Measuring Poverty in the 21st Century.

Economic interventions are increasingly recognised as a mechanism to address perinatal health outcomes among disadvantaged groups. In the US, the earned income tax credit (EITC) is the largest poverty alleviation programme. Little is known about its effects on perinatal health among recipients and their children. We exploit quasi-random variation in the size of EITC payments to examine the effects of income on perinatal health. We find that EITC payment size is associated with better levels of several indicators of perinatal health.