EITC and Marriage

Abstract

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) could either penalize or subsidize marriage. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and controlling for individual fixed effects and the endogeneity of the EITC, we find that, among a sample of married women with children, those who face larger increases in their EITC are less likely to remain married. However, the effect is economically insignificant. We find no relationship between the EITC and marriage for unmarried women. We conclude that the EITC expansions during the early-to mid-1990s had little or no effect on marriage decisions.