Income and Marital Events: Evidence from an Income-Maintenance Experiment

Abstract

In this paper we report estimates of the impacts of the Seattle and Denver Income-Maintenance Experiments on marital dissolution and remarriage. To assess the experimental impacts, we use a stochastic model of rare events in which the rate at which an event occurs is assumed to depend log linearly on a set exogenous variables. Overall, income maintenance raises the rate of marital dissolution. For black, white, and Chicana women, the greatest increase occurs at the support levels closest to the control situation. The impact of income maintenance on remarriage differs by race-ethnicity. For Chicanas, the rate of remarriage decreases as the level of support increase. For blacks and whites, income maintenance has no discernible impact on the rate of remarriage. The results provide empirical evidence that a change in economic situation does affect marital events in low-income populations.