Joe Masters is a former New Haven law student who earned his JD at Yale Law School and completed a Landlord and Tenant Clinic. Also taking on an editor’s role with the Yale Law Journal, Joe Masters was active with the Law Review Survey Reading Group.
An April, 2022, article “Whose Child Is This? Improving Child-Claiming Rules in Safety-Net Programs” brings focus to the major US challenge of child poverty. With policymakers having crafted a surfeit of transfer and safety-net programs that support families in need, protocol are required for determining just how benefits are distributed. These rules define just which parents and children are eligible for funds, and have a major impact on meeting societal goals and providing meaningful assistance.
The Yale Law Journal article takes an in-depth look at the issue through case studies on the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit. These provide insight into how specific child-claiming rules affect children’s wellbeing and overarching program goals. A particularly challenging issue is in defining what level of flexibility claimants’ households should have in using allocated funds, and how funds should be channeled to children’s caregivers. With a variety of benefit structures in play, the authors argue that there is no one clear set of child-claiming rules that can be used across the spectrum of safety net programs.
