Labor Supply at the Extensive and Intensive Margins: The EITC, Welfare, and Hours Worked
Labor Supply at the Extensive and Intensive Margins: The EITC, Welfare, and Hours Worked
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粗放边际和集约边际的劳动力供给：EITC、福利和工作时间
DOI：
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发表时间：
2002
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Bruce D. Meyer
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Bruce D. Meyer
以前的一些研究强调了劳动力供给在广泛边际(参与)和密集边际(工作时间)上的差异(例如，James J.Heckman，1993；Jean Kimmel和Thomas J.Kniesner，1998)。与其他非实验数据相比，最近的税收和福利政策变化提供了一种潜在更令人信服的方式来识别这些反应。1990-1996年期间劳动所得税抵免的变化在很短时间内极大地改变了单身母亲的预算。这些激励措施的变化很可能与不同个体在工作意愿上的差异无关，因此很可能是劳动力供应决策的外生性因素。这种外生性的缺乏更难解释不同人之间的工资差异，这是识别差异的主要替代来源。除了偏好的异质性，工资还受到供求因素的推动，人们必须考虑这些因素，才能使用工资差异获得有效的估计。EITC明确鼓励单亲父母在一年中至少工作一些时间，因为它将所有正小时点设定的预算转移出去。这第一个预测显然得到了数据的证实。此外，理论上意味着，EITC将减少那些已经工作的人的工作时间，因为大多数获奖者处于信贷时间表的平台期或逐步淘汰部分。对于这些受助人，EITC降低或不影响税后工资，同时通过信用付款的收入效应阻碍工作。然而，最近符合EITC资格的个人的小时工作模式似乎不符合第二个预测。可能的受助者群体的工作时间和周数并没有下降。本文在Nada Eissa和Jeffrey Liebman(1996)以及Meyer和Dan T.Rosenbaum(1999)早期工作的基础上分析了这一令人费解的发现。本研究表明，几乎所有单亲母亲的劳动力供给调整都发生在广泛边际而不是集约边际。这一发现提出了一个问题，即需要什么模型特征来解释参与和工作时间，但答案有待于未来的工作提供。这一发现还表明，模拟EITC等针对低薪工人的替代政策的大型文献可能具有误导性，因为几乎所有工作都使用了暗示参与度和工时利润率方面类似反应的模型。
Some previous studies have emphasized differences between labor-supply responses on the extensive margin (participation) and intensive margin (hours worked) (e.g., James J. Heckman, 1993; Jean Kimmel and Thomas J. Kniesner, 1998). Recent tax and welfare policy changes provide a potentially more convincing way of identifying these responses than is available in other nonexperimental data. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) changes during the 1990– 1996 period sharply altered the budget sets of single mothers over a short period of time. These changes in incentives are likely to be unrelated to differences across individuals in the desire to work and thus are likely to be exogenous to labor-supply decisions. This lack of exogeneity is harder to claim for wage differences across people, which are the main alternative source of identifying variation. In addition to preference heterogeneity, wages are driven by supply and demand factors that one must account for to obtain valid estimates using wage variation. The EITC unequivocally encourages single parents to work at least some hours during a year because it shifts out the budget set at all positive hours points. This first prediction is clearly confirmed by the data. In addition, theory implies that the EITC will decrease hours worked among those already working because most recipients are on the plateau or phase-out portions of the credit schedule. For these recipients, the EITC reduces or does not affect the after-tax wage while at the same time discouraging work through the income effect of the credit payment. However, recent hours-worked patterns for EITC-eligible individuals do not appear to fit this second prediction. Hours and weeks worked by likely recipient groups have not fallen. This paper analyzes this puzzling finding, building on earlier work by Nada Eissa and Jeffrey Liebman (1996) and Meyer and Dan T. Rosenbaum (1999). This study shows that nearly all of the laborsupply adjustment of single mothers occurs at the extensive margin, not the intensive margin. This finding raises the issue of what model features are needed to explain both participation and hours but leaves the answer to be provided in future work. This finding also suggests that the large literature simulating alternative policies for low-wage workers such as the EITC may be misleading because nearly all work has used models that imply similar responses on participation and hours margins.