Empirical research has shown that public policy such as tax and transfer programs have had a deleterious effect on marital stability. This study analyzes the cost to individuals of various aspects of the marriage penalty tax (MPT) and thereby how it discourages marriage and how it harms both individuals and society at large. Decline of the family, especially married couples, is regarded as one of the critical problems facing American society. Past research indicates that the MPT, due to its negative impact on marital stability and two-parent families, results in major social and economic costs, such as higher rates of children living in poverty, lower education, higher unemployment, more crime, and poorer health. Given its harm, we conclude that the MPT should be eliminated from the tax code. Opponents to repealing the marriage penalty have complained that ‘higher-income’ taxpayers receive disproportionate benefit. However, this research shows that the MPT has an equally negative effect on couples in the lowest income categories, particularly with its impact on the earned income tax credit. Further, regardless of a couple’s income level, the marriage penalty is detrimental to marriage, and thus, to society overall. Tax laws, as part of public policy, should foster, not hamper, two-parent families and their corresponding economic benefits such as improved employment, better public health, and lower crime.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2193082_code242236.pdf?abstractid=2149247

The Federal Government’s War on Marriage AKA the Marriage Penalty Tax: Unfair to Individuals and Harmful to Society

This study is an extension of prior research that quantifies the magnitude of the marriage penalty tax (MPT) and measures the distributional effects on the U.S. population in general. We use the Internal Revenue Service’s Statistics of Income (SOI) data and the Census Bureau’s year Current Population Survey (CPS) database. Estimates of the MPT are computed based on the effects of the most recent tax act to all taxpayers according to class of income. The study examines distribution of the MPT and projects effects of current tax law affecting MPT, the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003. Enactment of this tax law was partly motivated by President Bush’s assessment that the tax code frequently taxes couples more after marriage and the MPT contradicts not only basic values but any reasonable sense of fairness. However, even after the passage of the act, results of this study indicate that while the marriage penalty tax is reduced, it continues to negatively impact American society. This, in turn, may have important implications for the social welfare of the nation. To make matters worse, current reductions in MPT will ‘sunset’ or expire after 2010, unless Congress votes to extend provisions of JGTRRA (aka Bush Tax Cuts).

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1724781_code242236.pdf?abstractid=1721205

The Negative Effect of the Marriage Penalty Tax on American Society

For decades the marriage penalty tax (MPT) has been debated, reduced, increased, and muddled in the US tax system. The issue is important to individual taxpayers, as well as to policy-makers, academic researchers, and society overall. Research shows that the MPT has a negative impact on marital stability, resulting in particularly deleterious effects on women and children, as single females, especially single-parent females, are more likely to be in poverty. Consequently, the MPT is a gender issue in that women are more negatively affected by it than men are, but to varying degrees all members of society are negatively affected, women, men, and children. The purpose of this study is to review how the MPT was affected by the new tax law, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, and briefly review the history of the MPT and its impact on individuals and society. While the MPT was greatly reduced by the 2017 Act, notably regarding tax rates, the MPT, as connected to the earned income tax credit, continues to have a major detrimental impact on low to moderate income couples, discouraging marriage and having a particularly negative effect on their children.

Negative Social and Economic Effects of the Marriage Penalty Tax on Women and Society

Post Release Job Market Study

Research in philosophy, sociology, history, and business indicates that the family is the key building block of a nation or culture. In families, parents often struggle with time allocation between their jobs and family life. The pursuit of career and wealth can easily become over-prioritised to the detriment of family. Even in ancient times, this was a problem, as indicated by the wise king Solomon, who warned: "Those who love money will never have enough." In recent decades, the proportion of women in the labour force has greatly increased. Being mother-friendly may be ethically right and socially desirable, but what is the financial impact on companies with human resource policies that facilitate the mother role of female employees? Findings of this study provide support that mother-friendly firms experience better financial performance; specifically, higher market value of equity. This is a notable finding, suggesting that the capital markets value firms with 'mother friendly' attributes. This affirms prior research that shows enhancing work-life balance, which facilitates emotional well-being, is associated with improved job performance, which in turn is associated with better company financial performance.

Mother-friendly companies, work-life balance, and emotional well-being: is there a relationship to financial performance and risk level?

FOR SOME PEOPLE, prisons are a substitute for parents This apparent overstatement is shorthand for two more precise points First, without parents--two of them, married to each other, working together as a team--a child is more likely to end up in the criminal justice system at some point in his life Without parents, prison becomes a greater probability in the child's life Second, if a child finds himself in the criminal justice system, either in his youth or adulthood, the prison will perform the parental function of supervising and controlling that person's behavior Of course, prison is a pathetic substitute for genuine parents Incarceration provides extreme, tightly controlled supervision that children typically outgrow in their toddler years and does so with none of the love and affection that characterize normal parental care of small children But that is what is happening: The person has failed to internalize the self-command necessary for living in a reasonably free and open society at the age most people do Since he cannot control himself, someone else must control him If he becomes too much for his parents, the criminal justice system takes over These necessary societal interventions do not repair the loss the child has sustained by the loss of a relationship with his parents By the time the penal system steps in, the state is engaged in damage control A child without a conscience, a child without self-control, is a lifelong problem for the rest of society A free society needs people with consciences The vast majority of people must obey the law voluntarily If people don't conform themselves to the law, someone will either have to compel them to do so or protect the public when they do not It costs a great deal of money to catch, convict, and incarcerate lawbreakers--not to mention that the surveillance and monitoring of potential criminals tax everybody's freedom if habitual lawbreakers comprise too large a percentage of the population The basic self-control and reciprocity that a free society takes for granted do not develop automatically Conscience development takes place in childhood Children need to develop empathy so they will care whether they hurt someone or whether they treat others fairly They need to develop self-control so they can follow through on these impulses and do the right thing even if it might benefit them to do otherwise All this development takes place inside the family Children attach to the rest of the human race through their first relationships with their parents They learn reciprocity, trust, and empathy from these primal relationships Disrupting those foundational relations has a major negative impact on children as well as on the people around them In particular, children of single parents--or completely absent parents--are more likely to commit crimes Without two parents, working together as a team, the child has more difficulty learning the combination of empathy, reciprocity, fairness, and selfcommand that people ordinarily take for granted If the child does not learn this at home, society will have to manage his behavior in some other way He may have to be rehabilitated, incarcerated, or otherwise restrained In this case, prisons will substitute for parents The observation that there are problems for children growing up in a disrupted family may seem to be old news Ever since Barbara Defoe Whitehead famously pronounced "Dan Quayle Was Right" (Atlantic Monthly, April 1993), the public has become more aware that single motherhood is not generally glamorous in the way it is sometimes portrayed on television David Blankenhorn's Fatherless America (Basic Books, 1995) depicted a country that is fragmenting along family lines Blankenhorn argued, and continues to argue in his work at the Institute for American Values, that the primary determinant of a person's life chances is whether he grew up in a household with his own father …

Parents or Prisons

MARRIAGE IS A naturally occurring, pre-political institution that emerges spontaneously from society. Western society is drifting toward a redefinition of marriage as a bundle of legally defined benefits bestowed by the state. As a libertarian, I find this trend regrettable. The organic view of marriage is more consistent with the libertarian vision of a society of free and responsible individuals, governed by a constitutionally limited state. The drive toward a legalistic view of marriage is part of the relentless march toward politicizing every aspect of society. Although gay marriage is the current hot-button topic, it is a parenthetical issue. The more basic question is the meaning of love, marriage, sexuality, and family in a free society. I define marriage as a society's normative institution for both sexual activity and the rearing of children. The modern alternative idea is that society does not need such an institution: No particular arrangement should be legally or culturally privileged as the ideal context for sex or childbearing. The current drive for creating gay unions that are the legal equivalent of marriage is part of this ongoing process of dethroning marriage from its pride of place. Only a few self-styled conservative advocates of gay marriage, such as Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch, seem to understand and respect the social function of marriage. Marriage as an institution necessarily excludes some kinds of behavior and endorses other kinds of behavior. This is why the conservative case for gay marriage is so remarkable: It flies in the face of the cultural stampede toward social acceptance of any and all sexual and childbearing arrangements, the very stampede that has fueled so much of the movement for gay marriage. This article is not primarily about gay marriage. It isn't even about why some forms of straight marriage are superior to others. Rather, the purpose of this article is to explain why a society, especially a free society, needs the social institution of marriage in the first place. I want to argue that society can and must discriminate among various arrangements for childbearing and sexual activity. The contrary idea has a libertarian justification in the background: Marriage is a contract among mutually consenting adults. For instance, libertarian law professor Richard Epstein penned an article last year called "Live and Let Live" in the Wall Street Journal (July 13, 2004). In it, he treated marriage as a combination of a free association of consenting individuals and an institution licensed by the state. But the influence of the libertarian rationale goes far beyond the membership of the Libertarian Party or the donor list of the Cato Institute. The editors of the Nation, for instance, support gay marriage but do not usually defend the sanctity of contracts. This apparent paradox evaporates when we realize that the dissolution of marriage breaks the family into successively smaller units that are less able to sustain themselves without state assistance. Marriage deserves the same respect and attention from libertarians that they routinely give the market. Although I believe life-long monogamy can be defended against alternatives such as polygamy, it is beyond the scope of a single article to do so. My central argument is that a society will be able to govern itself with a smaller, less intrusive government if that society supports organic marriage rather than the legalistic understanding of marriage. A natural institution LIBERTARIANS HAVE EVERY reason to respect marriage as a social institution. Marriage is an organic institution that emerges spontaneously from society. People of the opposite sex are naturally attracted to one another, couple with each other, co-create children, and raise those children. The little society of the family replenishes and sustains itself. Humanity's natural sociability expresses itself most vibrantly within the family. …

Jennifer Roback Morse

Papers

Parents or Prisons

Marriage and the Limits of Contract