Eligibility and benefits for anti-poverty income transfers in the U.S. are based on both the means and the household characteristics of applicants, such as their filing status, living arrangement, and marital status. In this paper we develop a dynamic structural model to study the effects of the U.S. tax-transfer system on the decisions of non-college-educated workers with children. In our model workers face uninsurable idiosyncratic risks and make decisions on savings, labor supply, living arrangement, and marital status. We find that the U.S. anti-poverty policy distorts the cohabitation/marriage decision of single mothers, providing incentives to cohabit. We also find quantitatively important effects on savings, and on the labor supply of husbands and wives. Namely, the model yields a U-shaped relationship between the earnings of one spouse and the labor supply of the other spouse, a result that we also find in the data. We show that these U-shaped relationships stem in part from the current design of anti-poverty income programs, and that the introduction of an EITC deduction on the earnings of secondary earners—as proposed in the 21st Century Worker Tax Cut Act—would increase the employment rate of the spouses of workers earning between $15K and $35K, especially of female spouses.

美国反贫困收入转移的资格和福利取决于申请人的方式和家庭特征，例如他们的申请状态、生活安排和婚姻状况。在本文中，我们开发了一个动态结构模型来研究美国税收转移制度对有子女的未受过大学教育的工人决策的影响。在我们的模范工人中，他们面临着无法投保的特殊风险，并就储蓄、劳动力供应、生活安排和婚姻状况做出决定。我们发现美国的反贫困政策扭曲了单身母亲的同居/婚姻决定，为同居提供了激励。我们还发现了对储蓄和夫妻劳动力供应的定量重要影响。即，该模型得出了配偶一方的收入与另一方配偶的劳动力供给之间的 U 型关系，我们在数据中也发现了这一结果。我们表明，这些 U 型关系部分源于当前反贫困收入计划的设计，并且按照 21 世纪工人减税法案的提议，对次要收入者的收入引入 EITC 扣除将增加收入在 $15K 和 $35K 之间的工人的配偶的就业率，尤其是女性配偶。