Tax-Based Marriage Incentives in the Affordable Care Act

B-Tier
Journal: National Tax Journal
Year: 2025
Volume: 78
Issue: 2
Pages: 369 - 413

Authors (2)

Elliott Isaac (Tulane University) Haibin Jiang (not in RePEc)

Score contribution per author:

1.005 = (α=2.01 / 2 authors) × 1.0x B-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) introduced a premium tax credit to help low-income families purchase insurance and an individual mandate penalty to encourage purchasing insurance, but a couple’s total tax credit and mandate penalty may differ depending on whether they are married. We use an instrumental variables approach to estimate couples’ marriage responses to the ACA by leveraging variation created by the premium tax credit, individual mandate, Medicaid expansion, and the “family glitch.” We estimate a significant though small positive marriage response to the marriage subsidy and a larger negative response to the family glitch.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:ucp:nattax:doi:10.1086/734569
Journal Field
Public
Author Count
2
Added to Database
2026-02-02