Household responses to tax and spending policies

Government policies affect labor supply and financial decisions in numerous ways. The tax code alters incentives for earning and reporting income, and government spending programs influence household consumption decisions. This dissertation consists of three empirical investigations quantifying the impact of particular government policies on household decisions.;The U.S. tax treatment of married couples changed in 1948, from a system in which each spouse paid taxes on his or her own income to a system in which a married couple is taxed as a unit. Chapter 1 investigates how this conversion affects labor supply and the division of income between spouses. It utilizes a natural experiment created by cross-state variation in property laws: Those in states with community property laws were unaffected by the 1948 legal change. Comparing the behavior of taxpayers in affected and unaffected states indicates that the tax change is associated with a decline in the labor force participation rate of married women, consistent with theory. Married women were also less likely to have on-wage income after 1948, reflecting pre-1948 allocation of family assets to wives for tax purposes. The effects of joint taxation on married men's labor force participation and non-wage income are generally not statistically significant.;Chapter 2 explores how the Earned Income Tax Credit affects reported self-employment income. A model in which an individual allocates labor supply between the wage sector and the self-employment sector generates predictions about how changes in the parameters of the EITC affect participation in self-employment. Consistent with the model, evidence from tax return data shows that an increase in the EITC phase-in rate increases the share of returns reporting self-employment income.;Chapter 3 investigates how the presence of a state merit scholarship program affects household-level consumption decisions. There has been concern that merit scholarships flow disproportionately to high income students and are largely used to fund non-educational expenses. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, I find no evidence that spending on non-educational goods increases more in states with merit scholarships than in other states. If anything, households respond by reducing their borrowing.