Jobs, Cash Transfers and Marital Instability: A Review and Synthesis of the Evidence
回顾负所得税实验证据，发现现金转移使婚姻不稳定增加50%，即使福利水平与现有项目相当，表明现金转移可能削弱丈夫养家角色，建议用工资补贴替代现金转移以稳定婚姻。
Expanding welfare benefits to include two-parent families has long been considered an option for a public policy designed to strengthen family units. The negative income tax experiments employed this option, and it was found that the experimental group experienced 50 percent higher marital instability than the control group that was eligible for the current set of income-maintenance programs-AFDC and Food Stamps. Marital instability increased even when an experimental plan was no more generous than AFDC for the splitting wife. The conclusion must be either that because of differences in information, stigma, or transaction costs, the experiments produced more powerful independence effects than an equivalent amount of AFDC, or that receiving NIT payments somehow reduced the attractiveness of the married state by calling into question the success of the husband as provider. These findings suggest that, if strengthening marriages is a public-policy objective, two-parent families would be better aided by wage subsidies that reduce the unemployment of family heads and raise the earnings of the family's working members.