You are assigned to Earned Income Tax Credit student in the Social Welfare Policy and Services Sections. Each student will research their assigned policies and write policy backgrounders. The purpose the backgrounder is to give you an understanding of the general process of policy analysis and to create a useful resource on important social welfare and other policy in the US. You can see other backgrounders in the discussion section, and these may be useful to you in the future.
Policy topic is
Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)
Each policy backgrounder is a maximum of four single-spaced pages including references. You may or not write your name on the policy backgrounder, as you wish. You may be as creative with the design as you wish.
Each backgrounder must include the headings that are bolded. The other questions are just to guide you. Make sure you follow the rubric and use the bolded headings:
Problem that necessitates the policy
What is the problem that this policy is designed to solve?
Why does it matter?
Facts and statistics about the problem specifically
Policy description
Describe the policy in its entirety (but succinctly)
Use bullet points
Who benefits, when, how, how much, how often, etc.
History of the policy
Brief history of how the policy came to be
Arguments in favor of the policy
What do those who favor this policy say about it?
Why is this a good policy?
Arguments against the policy
What do those who oppose this policy say about it?
Why is this a bad policy?
Policy evaluation including statistics – this is where you say whether this is good, bad, indifferent, inadequate, excessive, etc.
Policy recommendations
What should we do about this policy?
Change it, end it, expand it?
Note that this is a very brief paper, so you must present the information in a concise manner.
Note 2: You must use the headings in bold. The questions under the bolded headings are placed here to help guide your thinking – do not include the questions in your paper.
You will submit three drafts of the policy backgrounder (there are three assignments, one for each draft and the final), but I will only grade the final draft. I will give your comments on the first and second draft so you may do an excellent job for the final draft. The final draft is graded on a rubric that is made. Also submit your final version in the appropriate discussion board.
