IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/5023.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Taxation and Labor Supply of Married Women: The Tax Reform Act of 1986 as a Natural Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Nada Eissa

Abstract

This paper uses the Tax Reform Act of 1986 as a natural experiment to identify the labor supply responsiveness of married women to changes in the tax rate. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 reduced the top marginal tax rate by 44 percent (from 50 percent to 28 percent), but changed less the marginal tax rate for those further down the income distribution. I analyze the response of married women at or above the 99th percentile of the income distribution, using as a control group women from the 75th percentile of the income distribution. I therefore identify the tax effect as the difference between the change in labor supply of women with large tax rate reductions and the change in labor supply of women with small tax rate reductions. I find evidence that the labor supply of high-income, married women increased due to the Tax Reform Act of 1986. The increase in total labor supply of married women at the top of the income distribution (relative to married women at the 75th percentile of the income distribution) implies an elasticity with respect to the after- tax wage of approximately 0.8. At least half of this elasticity is due to labor force participation. Use of a second control group supports the participation response but is inconclusive on the hours of work response.

Suggested Citation

  • Nada Eissa, 1995. "Taxation and Labor Supply of Married Women: The Tax Reform Act of 1986 as a Natural Experiment," NBER Working Papers 5023, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:5023
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w5023.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kevin M. Murphy & Finis Welch, 1992. "The Structure of Wages," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(1), pages 285-326.
    2. Lawrence B. Lindsey, 1981. "Is the Maximum Tax on Earned Income Effective?," NBER Working Papers 0613, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Newey, Whitney K & Powell, James L & Walker, James R, 1990. "Semiparametric Estimation of Selection Models: Some Empirical Results," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 324-328, May.
    4. Ashenfelter, Orley & Heckman, James J, 1974. "The Estimation of Income and Substitution Effects in a Model of Family Labor Supply," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 42(1), pages 73-85, January.
    5. Peter Kooreman & Arie Kapteyn, 1990. "On the Empirical Implementation of Some Game Theoretic Models of Household Labor Supply," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 25(4), pages 584-598.
    6. Cogan, John F, 1981. "Fixed Costs and Labor Supply," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(4), pages 945-963, June.
    7. Mroz, Thomas A, 1987. "The Sensitivity of an Empirical Model of Married Women's Hours of Work to Economic and Statistical Assumptions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(4), pages 765-799, July.
    8. Robert K. Triest, 1990. "The Effect of Income Taxation on Labor Supply in the United States," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 25(3), pages 491-516.
    9. O. Ashenfelter & R. Layard (ed.), 1987. "Handbook of Labor Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 2, number 2.
    10. MaCurdy, Thomas E, 1981. "An Empirical Model of Labor Supply in a Life-Cycle Setting," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(6), pages 1059-1085, December.
    11. Deaton, Angus, 1985. "Panel data from time series of cross-sections," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1-2), pages 109-126.
    12. Barry Bosworth & Gary Burtless, 1992. "Effects of Tax Reform on Labor Supply, Investment, and Saving," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 3-25, Winter.
    13. Marjorie B. McElroy, 1990. "The Empirical Content of Nash-Bargained Household Behavior," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 25(4), pages 559-583.
    14. O. Ashenfelter & R. Layard (ed.), 1987. "Handbook of Labor Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Blundell, Richard & Macurdy, Thomas, 1999. "Labor supply: A review of alternative approaches," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 27, pages 1559-1695, Elsevier.
    2. Michael P. Keane, 2011. "Labor Supply and Taxes: A Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(4), pages 961-1075, December.
    3. Jorge Gonzalez Chapela, 2011. "Recreation, home production, and intertemporal substitution of female labor supply: evidence on the intensive margin," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 14(3), pages 532-548, July.
    4. Anil Kumar, 2016. "Lifecycle-consistent female labor supply with nonlinear taxes: evidence from unobserved effects panel data models with censoring, selection and endogeneity," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 207-229, March.
    5. Nada Eissa, 1996. "Tax Reforms and Labor Supply," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 10, pages 119-151, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Stacy Dickert & Scott Houser & John Karl Scholz, 1995. "The Earned Income Tax Credit and Transfer Programs: A Study of Labor Market and Program Participation," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 9, pages 1-50, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. repec:eee:labchp:v:1:y:1986:i:c:p:3-102 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Kleven, Henrik Jacobsen & Kreiner, Claus Thustrup, 2006. "The marginal cost of public funds: Hours of work versus labor force participation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(10-11), pages 1955-1973, November.
    9. Herwig Immervoll & Henrik Jacobsen Kleven & Claus Thustrup Kreiner & Emmanuel Saez, 2007. "Welfare reform in European countries: a microsimulation analysis," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(516), pages 1-44, January.
    10. Julie L. Hotchkiss & Robert E. Moore & Fernando Rios-Avila, 2014. "Assessing the Welfare Impact of Tax Reform: A Case Study of the 2001 U.S. Tax Cut," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(2), pages 404-404, June.
    11. Eissa, Nada & Hoynes, Hilary Williamson, 1999. "The Earned Income Tax Credit and the Labor Supply of Married Couples," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt1024b9z8, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    12. N. Eissa & H. W. Hoynes, "undated". "The Earned Income Tax Credit and the Labor Supply of Married Couples," Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Papers 1194-99, University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty.
    13. Michiel Evers & Ruud Mooij & Daniel Vuuren, 2008. "The Wage Elasticity of Labour Supply: A Synthesis of Empirical Estimates," De Economist, Springer, vol. 156(1), pages 25-43, March.
    14. Hotchkiss, Julie L. & Moore, Robert E. & Rios-Avila, Fernando, 2020. "Cost of policy choices: A microsimulation analysis of the impact on family welfare of unemployment and price changes," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    15. Saez, Emmanuel, 2003. "The effect of marginal tax rates on income: a panel study of 'bracket creep'," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(5-6), pages 1231-1258, May.
    16. Moura, Rodrigo Leandro, 2008. "Testando as Hipóteses do Modelo de Mincer para o Brasil," Revista Brasileira de Economia - RBE, EPGE Brazilian School of Economics and Finance - FGV EPGE (Brazil), vol. 62(4), December.
    17. Scheffel, Juliane, 2011. "How do unusual working schedules affect social life?," SFB 649 Discussion Papers 2011-025, Humboldt University Berlin, Collaborative Research Center 649: Economic Risk.
    18. Hanson, Kenneth & Golan, Elise H. & Vogel, Stephen J. & Olmsted, Jennifer, 2002. "Tracing The Impacts Of Food Assistance Programs On Agriculture And Consumers: A Computable General Equilibrium Model," Food Assistance and Nutrition Research Reports 33831, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    19. Martin Feldstein, 1995. "Behavioral Responses to Tax Rates: Evidence from TRA86," NBER Working Papers 5000, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Huffman, Wallace E. & El-Osta, Hisham, 1997. "Off-Farm Work Participation, Off-Farm Labor Supply and On-Farm Labor Demand of U.S. Farm Operators," ISU General Staff Papers 199712010800001290, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    21. Lusi Liao & Sasiwimon Warunsiri Paweenawat, 2021. "The inversion of married women's labour supply and wage: Evidence from Thailand," Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, The Crawford School, The Australian National University, vol. 35(1), pages 82-98, May.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:5023. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.