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Increasing Assets to Promote Healthy Families in Kentucky

 

Lead: Kentucky Youth Advocates

Key Partners: Children Inc.; Community Coordinated Child Care; Eastern Kentucky Child Care Coalition; The Hatcher Group; Kentucky Council of Churches; Kentucky Domestic Violence Association; Metro United Way; Network Center for Community Change; The Annie E. Casey Foundation; The Stoneman Family Foundation.

Project Location: Kentucky

Contact: Katie Carter, senior policy analyst, Kentucky Youth Advocates, kcarter@kyyouth.org or 502-895-8167, ext. 128

Project Description: 

Research has shown wealth to be a key indicator of health. The federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which reduces the amount of taxes owed by people who work and have low wages, has proven to be an effective tool for helping low-income families. Building on the success of the federal EITC, Kentucky Youth Advocates and its partners will use their grant funding to seek adoption of a refundable state-level EITC and to make the state-level Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) refundable in Kentucky. 

Kentucky is one of the poorest states in the country, with the 47th highest poverty rate out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia and its rates of obesity, diabetes and asthma are among the highest in the nation. The goal of this project is to improve the health of Kentucky families by building state-wide support for tax policies that will help low-income families retain more of their income—money that can then be spent on health improvements, like regular doctor’s visits, healthier diets, and weight-loss or smoking cessation services.    

To achieve this policy change, Kentucky Youth Advocates and its partners will implement a campaign with three objectives—to build crucial support among policymakers by distributing issue briefs and fact sheets about how the proposed tax credits will benefit the health and finances of their constituents; to increase public awareness of the issue through media outreach; and to engage grassroots advocates by offering tools, training sessions and sample op-eds and letters to the editor.