EITC and Marriage

Dickert‐Conlin, Stacy; Houser, Scott

doi:10.17310/ntj.2002.1.02

Cited by 85 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Previous research does not find evidence of the EITC influencing marriage (see Houser, 2002 andEllwood 2000), but if people are altering their marital status and fertility decisions in response to the EITC, and therefore the compositions of the samples are changing over time, we might expect to see a differential fertility effect between married women versus unmarried women.…”

Section: B Sensitivity Testsmentioning

confidence: 89%

The earned income tax credit and fertility

2007

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Government programs designed to provide income safety nets or to encourage work often restrict eligibility to families with children, in an attempt to keep the programs well targeted. One potentially unintended consequence of the design of these programs is that if they lower the costs associated with having children, economic theory suggests that they may encourage childbearing. This paper considers whether dramatically changing incentives in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) affect fertility rates in the United States. We use birth certificate data spanning the period 1990 to 1999 to test whether expansions in the credit influenced birthrate among targeted families. While economic theory would predict that a positive fertility effect of the program for many eligible women, our baseline models show that expanding the credit produced only extremely small reductions in higher-order fertility among white women. We also find evidence that suggests changes in marriage patterns may be related to changing fertility rates. For example, higher levels of the EITC are associated with higher first birth rates among married women and lower first births among unmarried women. This may suggest that the EITC encouraged marriage among single women. ‡ Thanks to Gabrielle Chapman, Cristian Meghea and Karoline Mortenson for excellent research assistance. We are also grateful to

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Section: B Sensitivity Testsmentioning

confidence: 89%

The earned income tax credit and fertility

2007

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“…Hoynes and Patel (2015) show that a policy-induced $1000 increase in the EITC leads a 9.4 percentage point reduction in the share of families with after-tax and transfer income below 100% poverty. Furthermore, researchers have investigated the impacts of the program on labor force participation (Eissa and Liebman 1996;Meyer and Rosenbaum 2001;Hotz and Scholz 2003;Eissa et al 2008;McKeehan 2017), educational attainment (Miller and Zhang 2009), test scores (Dahl and Lochner 2012), marriage (Ellwood 2000;Dickert-Conlin and Houser 2002;Michelmore 2018), fertility (Duchovny 2001;Baughman andDickertConlin 2009, Meckel 2015), and foster care (Biehl and Hill 2017). Dowd and Horowitz (2011) show that the EITC is often only a short-term safety nets for lowincome households by providing evidence that 61 percent of recipients only claim the EITC for one or two years.…”

Section: Previous Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Income on Health: New Evidence from the Earned Income Tax Credit

Lenhart

2017

SSRN Journal

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This study examines the relationship between income and health by using an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which increased benefits to households with at least two children, as a source of exogenous variations of earnings. The paper adds to previous work by: (1) estimating treatment effects on the treated using simulated EITC benefits and longitudinal data; (2) testing whether health effects vary across the three different parts of the EITC schedule; (3) examining the role of food expenditures and health insurance as potential mechanisms. The study finds that income improves the likelihood of affected heads of households reporting to be in excellent or very good health by 6.9 to 8.9 percentage points. The effects are largest in the plateau phase of the EITC schedule, where previous researchers have identified pure income effects of the program. The results are robust to several additional specifications, including a semi-parametric DD model and specifications that account for the potential endogeneity of sample. When examining potential channels underlying the relationship between income and health, I find that affected household increase their food expenditures by 10.5 to 20.3 percent and are 1.52 percent more likely to have health insurance coverage.

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“…Negative substitution and income effects reduce employment for higher-income families, particularly secondary earners (Eissa and Hoynes, 2004). Literature finds mostly no effects on marriage and fertility decisions (Dickert-Conlin andHauser, 2002, andEllwood, 2000).…”

Section: Policies Aimed At Reducing Inequality Of Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 99%