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CTC and ACTC Participation Results and IRS-Census Match Methodology, Tax Year 2021
August 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-49
The Child Tax Credit (CTC) and Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC) help ease the financial burden of families with children. This paper provides taxpayer and dollar participation estimates for the CTC and ACTC covering tax year 2021. In this tax year the credit was temporarily expanded under the American Rescue Plan Act. The estimates derive from linking the 2022 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC) to IRS administrative data. This approach, called the Exact Match, uses survey data to identify CTC/ACTC eligible taxpayers and IRS administrative data to indicate which eligible taxpayers claimed and received the credit. Overall, in tax year 2021, eligible taxpayers participated in the CTC and ACTC program at a rate of 91 percent while dollar participation was 85 percent.
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Access to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) at the State and Substate Levels: Meaning and Measurement
July 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-44
This study estimates eligibility and access rates for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) administrative data linked with American Community Survey (ACS) data. This study is one result of a long-term research collaboration among USDA's Economic Research Service; the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census; USDA's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS); and participating state WIC agencies.'By analyzing WIC participation at the state and substate levels, the report provides insights into program reach and demographic differences. The findings confirm that the Census Bureau estimates meet high statistical reliability standards, providing valuable data for program officials and managers, and other stakeholders, to enhance program outreach and effectiveness. A key focus of the report is the comparison between Census Bureau and USDA, FNS estimates, which differ in methodology and measurement scope.
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New U.S. Business Establishments: Surging or Stalling?
June 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-36
Since the 1990s, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has reported much more rapid growth in U.S. private sector employer establishments than has the Census Bureau' the gap reached roughly 1.6 million by 2023. Using linked BLS-Census microdata, we document two main drivers. First, a large and growing number of employers providing services to the elderly and persons with disabilities are in scope for the BLS frame but not the Census Bureau's. Second, many firms appear with substantially more establishments in the BLS frame. These discrepancies substantially affect the measured establishment size distribution and quantitative policy analysis.
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Did Foreigners Pay America's Tariffs? Quantity Discounts, Scale Economies and Incomplete Pass-Through
February 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-17
Transaction-level quantity discounts are a pervasive feature of US trade, shaping both price variation and tariff incidence. Using administrative microdata, we show that these discounts reflect transaction-level scale economies rather than market power. Accounting for these micro-level economies resolves a key puzzle: while observed import prices rose one-for-one with 2018-2019 US tariffs, we show this was driven by the loss of scale economies as transaction sizes collapsed. Controlling for this scale effect, the strategic pass-through of tariffs to scale-free prices falls to 60 percent, implying foreign exporters absorbed a significant share of the burden through reduced markups.
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Integrating Multiple U.S. Census Bureau Data Assets to Create Standardized Profiles of Program Participants
January 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-01
The Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 (Evidence Act) directed federal agencies to systematically use data when making policy decisions. In response, the U.S. Census Bureau established the Evidence Group within its Center for Economic Studies (CES). With an interdisciplinary team of economists, sociologists, and statisticians, the Evidence Group can support the broader federal government in their efforts to use existing data to improve program operations without increasing respondent burden. For federal agencies administering social safety net and business assistance programs in particular, the team provides a no-cost evidence-building service that links program records to Census Bureau data assets and creates a series of standardized tables describing participants, their economic outcomes prior to program entry, and the communities where they live. These tables provide partner agencies with the detailed information they need to better understand their participants and potentially make their programs more accountable and effective in reaching their target populations. In this working paper, we describe the standardized tables themselves as well as the data assets available at the Census Bureau to create these tables, the data files produced by the table production process, and the methodology used to merge and harmonize data on participants and subsequently calculate unbiased and accurate estimates. We conclude with a brief discussion of steps taken to ensure confidentiality and data security. This documentation is intended to facilitate proper use and understanding of the standardized tables by partner agencies as well as researchers who are interested in leveraging these tools to explore characteristics of their samples of interest.
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CTC and ACTC Participation Results and IRS-Census Match Methodology, Tax Year 2020
December 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-76
The Child Tax Credit (CTC) and Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC) offer assistance to help ease the financial burden of families with children. This paper provides taxpayer and dollar participation estimates for the CTC and ACTC covering tax year 2020. The estimates derive from an approach that relies on linking the 2021 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC) to IRS administrative data. This approach, called the Exact Match, uses survey data to identify CTC/ACTC eligible taxpayers and IRS administrative data to indicate which eligible taxpayers claimed and received the credit. Overall in tax year 2020, eligible taxpayers participated in the CTC and ACTC program at a rate of 93 percent while dollar participation was 91 percent.
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Comparison of Child Reporting in the American Community Survey and Federal Income Tax Returns Based on California Birth Records
September 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-55
This paper takes advantage of administrative records from California, a state with a large child population and a significant historical undercount of children in Census Bureau data, dependent information in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Form 1040 records, and the American Community Survey to characterize undercounted children and compare child reporting. While IRS Form 1040 records offer potential utility for adjusting child undercounting in Census Bureau surveys, this analysis finds overlapping reporting issues among various demographic and economic groups. Specifically, older children, those of Non-Hispanic Black mothers and Hispanic mothers, children or parents with lower English proficiency, children whose mothers did not complete high school, and families with lower income-to-poverty ratio were less frequently reported in IRS 1040 records than other groups. Therefore, using IRS 1040 dependent records may have limitations for accurately representing populations with characteristics associated with the undercount of children in surveys.
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Expanding the Frontier of Economic Statistics Using Big Data: A Case Study of Regional Employment
July 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-37
Big data offers potentially enormous benefits for improving economic measurement, but it also presents challenges (e.g., lack of representativeness and instability), implying that their value is not always clear. We propose a framework for quantifying the usefulness of these data sources for specific applications, relative to existing official sources. We specifically weigh the potential benefits of additional granularity and timeliness, while examining the accuracy associated with any new or improved estimates, relative to comparable accuracy produced in existing official statistics. We apply the methodology to employment estimates using data from a payroll processor, considering both the improvement of existing state-level estimates, but also the production of new, more timely, county-level estimates. We find that incorporating payroll data can improve existing state-level estimates by 11% based on out-of-sample mean absolute error, although the improvement is considerably higher for smaller state-industry cells. We also produce new county-level estimates that could provide more timely granular estimates than previously available. We develop a novel test to determine if these new county-level estimates have errors consistent with official series. Given the level of granularity, we cannot reject the hypothesis that the new county estimates have an accuracy in line with official measures, implying an expansion of the existing frontier. We demonstrate the practical importance of these experimental estimates by investigating a hypothetical application during the COVID-19 pandemic, a period in which more timely and granular information could have assisted in implementing effective policies. Relative to existing estimates, we find that the alternative payroll data series could help identify areas of the country where employment was lagging. Moreover, we also demonstrate the value of a more timely series.
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Revisiting Methods to Assign Responses when Race and Hispanic Origin Reporting are Discrepant Across Administrative Records and Third Party Sources
May 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-26
The Best Race and Ethnicity Administrative Records Composite file ('Best Race file') is an composite file which combines Census, federal, and Third Party Data (TPD) sources and applies business rules to assign race and ethnicity values to person records. The first version of the Best Race administrative records composite was first constructed in 2015 and subsequently updated each year to include more recent vintages, when available, of the data sources originally included in the composite file. Where updates were available for data sources, the most recent information for persons was retained, and the business rules were reapplied to assign a single race and single Hispanic origin value to each person record. The majority of person records on the Best Race file have consistent race and ethnicity information across data sources. Where there are discrepancies in responses across data sources, we apply a series of business rules to assign a single race and ethnicity to each record. To improve the quality of the Best Race administrative records composite, we have begun revising the business rules which were developed several years ago. This paper discusses the original business rules as well as the implemented changes and their impact on the composite file.
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Antitrust Enforcement Increases Economic Activity
October 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-50
We hand-collect and standardize information describing all 3,055 antitrust law suits brought by the Department of Justice (DOJ) between 1971 and 2018. Using restricted establishment-level microdata from the U.S. Census, we compare the economic outcomes of a non-tradable industry in states targeted by DOJ antitrust lawsuits to outcomes of the same industry in other states that were not targeted. We document that DOJ antitrust enforcement actions permanently increase employment by 5.4% and business formation by 4.1%. Using an event-study design, we find (1) a sharp increase in payroll that exceeds the increase in employment, meaning that DOJ antitrust enforcement increases average wages, (2) an economically smaller increase in sales that is statistically insignificant, and (3) a precise increase in the labor share. While we cannot separately measure the quantity and price of output, the increase in production inputs (employment), together with a proportionally smaller increase in sales, strongly suggests that these DOJ antitrust enforcement actions increase the quantity of output and simultaneously decrease the price of output. Our results show that government antitrust enforcement leads to persistently higher levels of economic activity in targeted industries.
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