Are Marriage-Related Taxes and Social Security Benefits Holding Back Female Labor Supply?

Are Marriage-Related Taxes and Social Security Benefits Holding Back Female Labor Supply?
Author: Margherita Borella
Publisher:
Total Pages: 87
Release: 2019
Genre: Income tax
ISBN:

In the U.S., both taxes and old age Social Security benefits depend on one's marital status and tend to discourage the labor supply of the secondary earner. To what extent are these provisions holding back female labor supply? We estimate a rich life-cycle model of labor supply and savings for couples and singles using the Method of Simulated Moments (MSM) on the 1945 and 1955 birth-year cohorts and we use it to evaluate what would happen without these provisions. Our model matches well the life cycle profiles of labor market participation, hours, and savings for married and single people and generates plausible elasticities of labor supply. Eliminating marriage-related provisions drastically increases the participation of married women over their entire life cycle, reduces the participation of married men after age 55, and increases the savings of couples in both cohorts, including the later one, which has similar participation to that of more recent generations. If the resulting government surplus were used to lower income taxation, there would be large welfare gains for the vast majority of the population.

Child-Rearing, Social Security and Married Women's Labor Supply Over the Life Cycle

Child-Rearing, Social Security and Married Women's Labor Supply Over the Life Cycle
Author: Debasmita Das
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022
Genre:
ISBN:

This paper studies how career interruptions during child-rearing years affect the labor market trajectory, lifetime earnings, and Social Security benefits of married women in the United States. To this end, I develop a dynamic structural life-cycle model of female labor supply, savings, and Social Security benefit claiming and estimate the model using the Method of Simulated Moments for the 1943-1954 birth cohort. Utilizing the estimated model, I evaluate the effects of revenue-neutral introduction of the Social Security Caregiver Credits that cover lost earnings during early child-rearing years through change in retirement benefits. The model predicts that introducing the provision of earning credits for child care in the Social Security system would lead to a sizeable reduction in gender gap in average career earnings at the Social Security Early Retirement Age. The findings suggest that instituting caregiver credits for child-rearing in the absence of the marriage-based Social Security benefits would offset a substantial portion of the motherhood penalty in lifetime labor earnings of married women and increase their retirement benefit adequacy.

Social Security Dependent Benefits, Net Payroll Tax, and Married Women's Labor Supply

Social Security Dependent Benefits, Net Payroll Tax, and Married Women's Labor Supply
Author: Hee-Seung Yang
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre:
ISBN:

This paper examines how Social Security dependent benefits impact the labor supply of married women aged 25-54. Specifically, I investigate whether the decrease in the rate of return to women's work discourages them from participating in the labor force by simulating expected net payroll tax rates and dependent benefits. Dependent benefits may reduce the net return to women's work, as they usually pay the full payroll tax without receiving marginal benefits for additional earnings if they claim benefits based on their husbands' earnings records. The results show that high net payroll tax rates reduce married women's work incentives, particularly those near retirement age.

Gendered Taxes: The Interaction of Tax Policy with Gender Equality

Gendered Taxes: The Interaction of Tax Policy with Gender Equality
Author: Maria Delgado Coelho
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 54
Release: 2022-02-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

This paper provides an overview of the relation between tax policy and gender equality, covering labor, capital and wealth, as well as consumption taxes. It considers implicit and explicit gender biases and corrective taxation. On labor taxes, we discuss the well-established findings on female labor supply and present new empirical work on the impact of household taxation. We also analyze the impact of progressivity on pay gaps and labor supply. On capital and wealth taxation, we discuss the implications of lower effective capital income taxation on the personal income tax burden gap across genders. We show that countries with relatively low female shares of capital income and wealth also tend to tax property and inheritances particularly lightly. On consumption taxes, we cover taxes on female hygiene products and excise taxes, which we assess in relation to externalities and differences in consumption patterns across genders.

How Do the Changing Labor Supply Behavior and Marriage Patterns of Women Affect Social Security Replacement Rates?

How Do the Changing Labor Supply Behavior and Marriage Patterns of Women Affect Social Security Replacement Rates?
Author: April Yanyuan Wu
Publisher:
Total Pages: 49
Release: 2013
Genre:
ISBN:

This paper seeks to determine the impact of the changing lives of women - increased labor force participation/earnings and reduced marriage rates - on Social Security replacement rates. First, our estimates, based on the Health and Retirement Study and Modeling Income in the Near Term, show that Social Security replacement rates have dropped sharply at both the household- and individual-level, and the decline will continue for future retirees. Our second finding is that this aggregate change masks a complex relationship between replacement rates and the marital status and income levels of individuals. The decline in replacement rates over time is largest for married couples with husbands whose earnings are in the top tercile. Decomposing the reasons for the overall decline shows that increases in the labor supply and earnings of women explain more than one-third of the change. In contrast, the impact of changing marital patterns is relatively small. Much of the remaining explanation rests with the increased Full Retirement Age and changing claiming behaviors.

Taxes and Marriage

Taxes and Marriage
Author: Hector Chade
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2004
Genre:
ISBN:

This article analyzes the effects of differential tax treatment of married and single individuals in the United States on marriage formation and composition, divorce, and labor supply. We develop a marriage-market model with search frictions and heterogeneous agents that is sufficiently rich to capture key elements of the problem under consideration. We then calibrate the model and use it to evaluate the quantitative effects of several tax reforms aimed at making the tax law neutral with respect to marital status. We find that these reforms (i) systematically increase the labor supply of married females, with changes ranging from 0.3 to 10.1 percent; (ii) have substantial effects on the correlation of spouses' incomes, which changes from 0.2 to values between 0.185 and 0.334; (iii) can lead to either an increase or decrease in the fraction of people married, with changes that range from 0.6 to 2.4 percent.

Does Social Security Continue to Favor Couples?

Does Social Security Continue to Favor Couples?
Author: Nadia S. Karamcheva
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre:
ISBN:

While dramatic increases in women's labor supply and earnings have led to a substantial decline in the fraction of women eligible for spouse benefits at retirement, most wives still receive a survivor benefit, as wives still typically have lower earnings than their husbands and live longer. Using the MINT microsimulation model and the HRS data linked with Social Security administrative earnings records, this paper examines the extent to which Social Security continues to favor couples and will do so in the future. The paper found that: While the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance program still distributes lifetime income from singles to couples, the transfers appear to be shrinking over time. Nevertheless, couples are still projected to have a higher benefit/tax ratio, a lower median net tax rate, and a greater likelihood of receiving positive net transfers from the system compared to those who are never married or divorced. The increased labor force participation and earnings of women have contributed significantly to the decline in redistribution from men to women, and from singles to couples, while the effect of declining marriage rates has only a modest effect. The policy implications of the findings are: Family benefit provisions within the Social Security program can have a significant impact on various measures of redistribution. Policymakers may find the results of this paper helpful in evaluating any reform proposals that would change these provisions.

Taxing Women

Taxing Women
Author: Edward J. McCaffery
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2007-12-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226555569

Taxing Women comprises both an insightful, critical analysis of the gender biases in current tax laws and a wake-up call for all those concerned with gender justice to pay more attention to the pervasive impact of such laws. Providing real-life examples, Edward McCaffery shows how tax laws are actually written to punish married couples who file jointly. No dual-income household can afford not to read this book before filing their taxes. "Taxing Women is a must-have primer for any woman who wants to understand how our current tax system affects her family's economic condition. In plain English, McCaffery explains how the tax code stacks the deck against women and why it's in women's economic interest to lead the next great tax rebellion."—Patricia Schroeder "McCaffery is an expert on the interplay between taxes and social policy. . . . Devastating in his analysis. . . . Intriguing."—Harris Collingwood, Working Women "A wake-up call regarding the inequalities of an archaic system that actually penalizes women for working."—Publishers Weekly

Women in the Labor Force

Women in the Labor Force
Author: Anna Fruttero
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 42
Release: 2020-02-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1513529137

Despite the increase in female labor force participation over the past three decades, women still do not have the same opportunities as men to participate in economic activities in most countries. The average female labor force participation rate across countries is still 20 percentage points lower than the male rate, and gender gaps in wages and access to education persist. As shown by earlier work, including by the IMF, greater gender equality boosts economic growth and leads to better development and social outcomes. Gender equality is also one of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals that 193 countries committed to achieve by 2030.

Handbook of the Economics of the Family

Handbook of the Economics of the Family
Author:
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 536
Release: 2023-03-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0323899668

Handbook of the Economics of the Family, Volume One includes comprehensive surveys of the current state of the economics literaure in the field, prepared by leading scholars, with a particular empahsis on the most recent developments in each area. Chapters cover Culture and the family; Mating markets; Household decisions and intra-household distributions; The economics of fertility: a new era; Families, labor markets, and policy; Family background, neighborhoods, and intergenerational mobility; The great transition: Kuznets facts for family-economists; An institutional perspective on the economics of the family. An economics approach to changing family arrangements Understanding of inequality and intergenerational mobility Evolution of gender roles within families and across societies