Stacy Dickert-Conlin

Taxes and the Timing of Births

Because the tax savings of having a child are a realized only if the birth takes place before midnight, January 1, the incentives for the “marginal” birth are substantial. Using a sample of children from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we find that the probability that a child is born in the last week of December, rather than the first week of January, is positively correlated with tax benefits. We estimate that increasing the tax benefit of having a child by

Did Expanding the EITC Promote Motherhood

500 raises the probability of having the child in the last week of December by 26.9 percent.

Slippery When Wet: The Effects of Local Alcohol Access Laws on Highway Safety

During the 1990’s the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) emerged as a primary means of providing income support for low-income families in the United States. In an effort to keep the program well targeted, the credit largely restricts eligibility to tax filers with children. One potentially unintended consequence of this design is that it might encourage childbearing. We raise the question of whether the EITC, through its generous benefits to families with children, actually increases fertility. We approach this topic for three reasons. The first is to expand upon an existing literature of economic incentives and fertility using the EITC expansion as a large exogenous variation in the price of childbearing. Findings in the welfare literature are inconclusive (Robert A. Moffitt, 1998), and the income tax literature typically finds small, but statistically significant effects of the income-tax system on fertility behavior (e.g., Leslie A. Whittington et al., 1990). Second, declining fertility rates in many Western counties raise the general issue of whether the tax system can be used as a tool for encouraging fertility. Finally, by considering the link between the EITC and fertility, we question a common, yet untested, assumption in the literature on the EITC and the labor supply of single parents: that the presence of a child is exogenous to the value of the EITC.

The effect of alcohol prohibition on illicit-drug-related crimes

Using detailed panel data on local alcohol policy changes in Texas, this paper tests whether the effect of these changes on alcohol-related accidents depends on whether the policy change involves where the alcohol is consumed and the type of alcohol consumed. After controlling for both county and year fixed effects, we find evidence that: (i) the sale of beer and wine may actually decrease expected accidents; and (ii) the sale of higher alcohol-content liquor may present greater risk to highway safety than the sale of just beer and wine.

Widows Waiting to Wed?: (Re)Marriage and Economic Incentives in Social Security Widow Benefits

We evaluate the effect of alcohol access on drug‐related crime and mortality using detailed information on access laws in Texas between 1978 and 1996. Counties with alcohol access have higher average levels of drug‐related crimes. However, after controlling for both county and year fixed effects, we find that having local alcohol access decreases crime associated with illicit drugs. This basic finding is replicated in two alternative analyses. First, we find that prohibiting the sale of beer to persons under 21, which arguably increases the implicit price of liquor more for juveniles in wet counties than for those in dry counties, increases the fraction of drug‐related arrests involving juveniles more in wet counties than in dry counties. Second, we find that after controlling for both county and year fixed effects, local alcohol access decreases mortality associated with illicit drugs. Alcohol access and illicit‐drug‐related outcomes appear to be substitutes.

How Well Can We Track Cohabitation Using the SIPP?: A Consideration of Direct and Inferred Measures *

In this paper we focus on an age restriction for remarriage in the Social Security system to determine if individuals respond to economic incentives for marriage. Aged widow(er) benefits are paid by the Federal government to persons whose deceased spouses worked in Social Security covered employment. A widow(er) is eligible to receive benefits if she or he is at least age 60. If a widow(er) remarries before age 60, he or she forfeits the benefit and, therefore, faces a marriage penalty. Under current law, there is no penalty if the remarriage occurs at 60 years of age or later. We investigate whether this rule affects the marriage behavior of widows. Specifically, we examine the rates of remarriage of women around age 60 under current as well as past Social Security eligibility rules using data from the Vital Statistics. Our results provide compelling evidence that this group of women respond to economic incentives when considering the decision to remarry. First, the 1979 law change that eliminated the marriage penalty for those at least age 60 resulted in a large increase in the marriage rate for widows at least age 60, suggesting that the marriage penalty discouraged marriage. The data for the most current period show a significant drop in marriage rates immediately prior to age 60 and an increase after that point. We do not observe this pattern in years when the relative marriage penalty was smaller or for divorced women who generally are not subject to the age-60 remarriage rule.

Donorcycles: Motorcycle Helmet Laws and the Supply of Organ Donors

Cohabitation is an alternative to marriage and to living independently for an increasing number of Americans. Despite this fact, research exploring links between living arrangements and economic behavior is limited by a lack of data that explicitly identify cohabiting couples. To aid researchers in using the Survey of Income and Program Participations (SIPP) rich data for cohabitation issues, our paper considers direct and inferred measures of cohabitation. Our findings suggest that: (1) the best inferred measures in pre-1996 SIPP depends upon a researchers goals and (2) that the SIPP counts a larger number of cohabiting couples than the widely-used CPS.

The Effect of Social Security on Divorce and Remarriage Behavior

Traffic safety mandates are typically designed to reduce the harmful externalities of risky behaviors. We consider whether motorcycle helmet laws also reduce a beneficial externality by decreasing the supply of viable organ donors. Our central estimates show that organ donations resulting from fatal motor vehicle accidents increase by 10 percent when states repeal helmet laws. Two features of this association suggest that it is causal: first, nearly all of it is concentrated among men, who account for over 90 percent of all motorcyclist deaths, and second, helmet laws are unrelated to the supply of donors who die in circumstances other than motor vehicle accidents. The estimates imply that every death of a helmetless motorcyclist prevents or delays as many as .33 death among individuals on organ transplant waiting lists.

The Deer Hunter: The Unintended Effects of Hunting Regulations ∗

This paper investigates the effects of economic incentives on divorce and remarriage behavior. Before December 1977, the Social Security law entitled divorcees to claim auxiliary benefits on their ex-spouse’s record only if the marriage lasted at least 20 years. One of the 1977 amendments of the Social Security rules shortened the minimum duration of an “eligible” marriage to ten years. Following the passage of the law, we find that the divorce rate at nine years of marriage decreased relative to a control group. However, there is not strong evidence of a corresponding increase in the divorce rate at ten years of marriage. We also find no evidence that the new claim on future Social Security benefits affected divorced women’s remarriage probability in the predicted way.

Allocating Scarce Organs: How a Change in Supply Affects Transplant Waiting Lists

To control the deer population, state game commissions regulate the types of deer that can be legally harvested. These regulations, however, might have an unintended effect on hunting-related accidents by changing the care hunters take when firing their riflesa moral hazard effector changing the composition of hunters. Using detailed data on hunting accidents and regulations in Pennsylvania counties from 1990 to 2005, we find compelling evidence that harvesting restrictions increase the care hunters take in a manner consistent with moral hazard. Thus, these regulations have a positive safety externality.