The Earned Income Tax Credit, Premarital Pregnancy, and Duration to Marriage

Stacy Dickert-Conlin, Syracuse University
Scott Houser, California State University, Fresno
Yun Li, Syracuse University
Jan Ondrich, Syracuse University

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a refundable tax credit paid to low-income families who work, with the largest credits going to families with children. The increasing role of the tax system as a means for transferring income to families raises the concern that, like welfare, there may be unintentional incentives implicit in the EITC that discourage marriage. The structure of the EITC may lead to “marriage penalties”; however, the EITC may also subsidize marriage. Large expansions in the EITC during the 1990s provide an excellent source of variation for investigating whether the EITC influences family structure. Wel use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to consider the question of whether the EITC influenced family structure decisions. We control for characteristics like welfare generosity in the respondent’s state, age, education, and number of children, in addition to controlling for the change in the individual’s EITC incentives for marriage