Leslie A. Whittington

Is there competition between breast-feeding and maternal employment?

Theory suggests that the decision to return to employment after childbirth and the decision to breast-feed may be jointly determined. We estimate models of simultaneous equations for two different aspects of the relationship between maternal employment and breast-feeding using 1993-1994 data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Infant Feeding Practices Study. We first explore the simultaneous duration of breast-feeding and work leave following childbirth. We find that the duration of leave from work significantly affects the duration of breast-feeding, but the effect of breast-feeding on work leave is insignificant. We also estimate models of the daily hours of work and breast-feedings at infant ages 3 months and 6 months postpartum. At both times, the intensity of work effort significantly affects the intensity of breast-feeding, but the reverse is generally not found. Competition clearly exists between work and breast-feeding for many women in our sample.

Economic incentives for financial and residential independence

In this paper we examine the impact of the resources of children and of their parents on the children’s transition to residential and financial independence. Previous studies of this transition focused primarily on the impact of family structure and parent-child relationships on the decision to leave home, but much less is known about the role of economic factors in the transition to independence. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) for the period 1968–1988, we estimate discrete-hazard models of the probability of achieving residential and financial independence. We find that the child’s wage opportunities and the parents’ income are important determinants of establishing independence. The effect of parental income changes with the child’s age. We also find some evidence that federal tax policy influences the decision to become independent, although the magnitude of this effect is quite small.

Taxes and the Family: The impact of the tax exemption for dependents on marital fertility

In this paper I use data from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics to examine the relationship between the dependent exemption feature of the United States federal income tax (an unambiguous subsidy to dependents) and the fertility behavior of married couples over the period 1979–1983. The exemption decreases the price of a child to a household, thus having a direct relationship to the timing and/or number of children observed in a family. Conditional logit results support this hypothesis by showing that the exemption has a positive and significant impact on the likelihood of having a birth during the period under study.

For Love or Money? The Impact of Income Taxes on Marriage

There is a large empirical literature that demonstrates the importance of economic factors in the decision to marry. Taxes, however, have been largely overlooked as a determinant of marriage, even though the tax system in the United States is not marriage-neutral; that is, when two individuals marry, their marital income tax burden is typically different--sometimes higher, sometimes lower--than their combined single income tax obligations. In this paper we explore the impact of the federal individual income tax, as well as other economic and demographic variables, on the marriage decisions of individuals. Using longitudinal data from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics for the period 1968-92, we estimate a discrete-time hazard model of the time to first marriage. We find that the probability of marriage is significantly affected by a range of economic and demographic variables. Importantly, we find that an increase in total income taxes paid by married versus single women has a negative effect on the likelihood of marriage, and that the change in the marginal tax rate is also a significant determinant of marriage in some cases; in contrast, the tax effects are rarely significant in determining marriage probabilities among men, although there are some differential responses by race. In general, the impacts of the income tax variables, even when statistically significant, are small. Copyright 1999 by The London School of Economics and Political Science

'Til Death or Taxes Do Us Part: The Effect of Income Taxation on Divorce

The effect of taxes on divorce has not been considered in previous empirical work on divorce. In this paper we examine the impact of the individual income tax on the likelihood of divorce. Using data from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics, we estimate a discrete-time hazard model of the probability of divorce from the first marriage. We find that couples respond to tax incentives in their decision to divorce, although these responses are typically small. We also estimate the impact of taxes on the separate divorce decisions of men and women. These results indicate that women clearly respond to tax incentives in their divorce decisions; the results for men are not always statistically significant.

Income taxes and the marriage decision

Economic incentives have been found to play an important role in the marriage decision in developed and developing countries. However, the way in which the income tax treatment of the family affects these incentives has been routinely ignored. This paper uses time-series data for the United States from 1947 to 1988 to estimate the impact of economic factors - including, for the first time, the tax consequences of marriage - on the aggregate marriage rate. The estimation results indicate that economic factors like income, female wages and education play an important and statistically significant role in the marriage decision. In particular, the tax consequences of marriage clearly affect the marriage decision: when income taxes increase with marriage, the aggregate marriage rate declines. However, the magnitude of this impact is quite small. This result suggests that some individuals respond to tax incentives in their marriage choices, but that for many individuals taxes do not affect these decisions.

Does Maternity Leave Induce Births

Alleviating the tension between the conflicting responsibilities women may face as mothers and as workers is a topic of current policy interest. Expansion of guaranteed maternity leave to all employed women in the United States is suggested as one possible “family-friendly” solution. Controversy surrounding the issue of increased maternity leave centers around the potential cost to firms of widespread access to leave. One specific concern is that the availability of maternity leave will actually increase births among eligible working women. In this paper we use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to examine the impact of maternity leave on fertility. We explore two possible routes through which maternity leave may influence fertility. We first estimate the impact of desired fertility on the probability of being in a job offering maternity leave. We then estimate the impact of maternity leave and desired fertility on the probability of a birth. We find no evidence that women sort by fertility desires into firms on the basis of their maternity leave policy. We do find that the probability of a birth increases as a result of maternity leave, and that the fertility effect of maternity leave increases with birth parity.

The labor supply of Latinas in the USA: comparing labor force participation wages and hours worked with Anglo and Black women.

This study explores the determinants of labor supply patterns among Latinas in the USA. We use recent microeconomic data from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics/Latino National Political Survey (PSID-LNPS) to estimate models of labor force participation, wages, and hours worked for a sample of Cuban, Mexican, and Puerto Rican women. We estimate the same models for Anglo and Black women in order to explore ethnic differences in the impact of characteristics affecting both the reservation and the market wage. We find that differences exist in the return to characteristics, such as education, but that there are also substantial differences in the levels of those characteristics across ethnic groups. The low wage rates and labor market activity of Latinas relative to Anglo and Black women are thus likely to be the combined result of lower investments in human capital and larger family size, the greater negative impact of macroeconomic conditions, and a stronger responsiveness to wages. Among Latinas, we find that there are differences in labor market outcomes between national origin and nativity groups. We also find that age at arrival and years in the USA play a role in labor supply, and that this is particularly true for Puerto Rican women.

Shacking Up or Shelling Out: Income Taxes, Marriage, and Cohabitation

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the income tax penalty associated with marriage contributes to the decision of a couple to live together as a married vs. a cohabiting couple. In this paper, we use household data from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics to estimate the impact of various factors, including the federal individual income tax, on a couples decision to marry instead of cohabit. We find that the initial decision to form either a cohabiting or a married union is only marginally affected by the income tax consequences of one form of union vs. another, and other factors play a more important role. However, for those already living together as a cohabiting couple, the decision to make the transition from a cohabiting to a married couple is significantly affected by the tax consequences of such a move. Here, an increase in the income tax at legal marriage, or an increase in the marginal tax rate with marriage, has a statistically significant and negative impact on the probability of transition from cohabitation to legal marriage. However, the magnitude of the tax impact is generally small, and several other variables are more important determinants.

State Income Tax Policy and Family Size: Fertility and the Dependency Exemption:

Tax exemptions for dependents are a subsidy to having children and therefore create incentives for fertility. This article explores the relationship between the changing tax value of the state exemption for dependents—combined with the federal exemption—and the observed fertility choices of married couples. Using data from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics (PSID), the article finds that the federal exemption does have a positive impact on differential period fertility for the sample of 229 married couples in this study. This effect is dampened by an offsetting labor force participation and marginal tax rate effect, but it does provide evidence that fiscal policy can influence fertility. State income tax exemptions do not appear to significantly influence the fertility decisions of the sample.