![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Freakonomics
Jul. 29th, 2005 04:14 pmConsider what happened one spring evening at midnight in 1987: seven million American children suddenly disappeared.
It was the night of April 15, and the Internal Revenue Service had just changed a rule. Instead of merely listing each dependent child, tax filers were now required to provide a Social Security number for each child.
Suddenly, seven million children—children who had existed only as phantom exemptions on the previous year’s 1040 forms—vanished, representing about one in ten of all dependent children in the United States.
It was the night of April 15, and the Internal Revenue Service had just changed a rule. Instead of merely listing each dependent child, tax filers were now required to provide a Social Security number for each child.
Suddenly, seven million children—children who had existed only as phantom exemptions on the previous year’s 1040 forms—vanished, representing about one in ten of all dependent children in the United States.