Extreme weather events, such as Tropical Storm Florence and Hurricane Michael, highlight a heavy truth about ongoing climate change: They hit low-income communities the hardest. And the future may be bleaker still.
As the earth continues to warm, Americans will experience more intense and costly storms — in addition to a host of other profound and detrimental impacts. Alongside the ambitious and comprehensive action urgently needed to limit climate change and its consequences, policymakers can take smaller steps now to begin to protect and empower the most vulnerable communities in this country.
A viable tool to do just that is a reformed Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Created in 1975 as a program that encourages work and supplements family earnings, the EITC offers low- and moderate-income workers a tax credit that varies by family size and annual income, and is paid out regardless of tax liability. In 2016 alone, the EITC lifted around 6 million people — including 3 million children — out of poverty, while reducing the severity of poverty for another 19 million people. Today the EITC is one the country's most effective and widely supported anti-poverty programs, but as climate change continues to be a growing determinant of poverty and inequality, we must consider how the EITC can help in the fight.
