Research
"The Effect of the Child Care Tax Credit on Maternal Labor Supply" R&R at the Journal of Human Resources
Abstract: The Child Care Tax credit (CCTC) is a child care subsidy program that allows working parents to claim a tax credit for their child care expenses. I document a comprehensive legislative history of the CCTC at both federal and state levels. Using the exogenous CCTC law changes and focusing on working-age mothers from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I use differences-in-differences, triple-differences, and instrumental variables methods to estimate the effects of the CCTC on maternal labor supply. I find that the CCTC significantly increases maternal labor force participation and the effects are more pronounced in married mothers than single mothers.
Download the poster for 2020 ASSA/AEA poster session
"Tax-Based Marriage Incentives in the Affordable Care Act" with Elliott Isaac
Abstract: The Affordable Care Act (ACA) introduced a premium tax credit to help low-income families purchase insurance from the newly established marketplace exchanges, but a couple's total tax credit may differ depending on whether they are married. We leverage variation in the marriage subsidy created by the ACA premium tax credit and use a simulated instruments approach to estimate the causal effect of the tax credits on marriage. We use a sample of different-sex married and cohabiting couples from the 2012--2017 American Community Surveys, which spans the introduction of the ACA tax credits in 2014. We estimate a significant though small positive marriage response to the marriage subsidy introduced by the ACA premium tax credit.
"The effect of the Child Care Tax Credit on Children's Long-term Educational Achievement"
Abstract: The Child Care Tax Credit (CCTC) is a child care subsidy program that encourages parents, especially mothers, to join the labor force. Previous research shows that the CCTC significantly increases the labor force participation of mothers, especially for married ones. How are children's well-being affected when mothers join the labor force? Potentially the tax credit can help the development of the child as it increases the income of the family. But the CCTC can also change the child care intensity and affect the development of the child. I document a comprehensive legislative history of the CCTC enactments, amendments, and repeals at both federal and state levels. Using the detailed CCTC variation generated by exogenous law changes and applying the variation on samples from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I examine the effects of the CCTC policy exposure at an early age on the educational achievement of the child. The results show that CCTC policy exposure at an early age has negative effects on the educational achievement of the child, which shows evidence that the mother's time allocation effect at an early age dominates the income effect of the tax credit for the marginal population. This research is the first to evaluate the impact of the CCTC on children's educational achievement.
The Short-term Effect of the Child Care Tax Credit on Children's Well-being
Abstract: In this paper, I use the comprehensive legislative history of the Child Care Tax Credit (CCTC) and data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Child and Young Adult, to examine the short-term effects of the CCTC policy exposure at an early age on the educational achievement and behavior problems of the children. Results show that CCTC policy exposure at an early age has negative effects on the educational achievement of the child, which shows evidence that the mother's time allocation effect at an early age dominates the income effect of the tax credit for the marginal population.