Gangopadhyaya Anuj, Blavin Fredric, Braga Breno, Gates Jason
Health Policy Center, Urban Institute, Washington, District of Columbia, USA.
Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population, Urban Institute, Washington, District of Columbia, USA.
Health Econ. 2020 Sep;29(9):975-991. doi: 10.1002/hec.4034. Epub 2020 Jun 29.
While earned income tax credit (EITC) expansions are typically associated with improvements in maternal mental health, little is known about the mechanisms through which the program affects this outcome. The EITC could primarily affect mental health through changes in family financial resources, changes in labor supply or changes in health insurance coverage of participants. We attempt to disentangle these mechanisms by assessing the effects of state and federal EITC expansion on mental health, employment, and health insurance by maternal marital status. We find that federal EITC expansions are associated with improved self-reported mental health for all mothers and large positive effects on employment for unmarried mothers. State EITC expansions are associated with improvements in mental health for married mothers only and have no effect on employment for married or unmarried mothers. Overall and for most subgroups of mothers, we find little association between EITC expansions and changes in health insurance coverage. These findings suggest that while EITC expansions improved mental health for unmarried mothers through a combination of the credit and employment effects, for married mothers, improved mental health is driven through the direct credit alone.
虽然劳动所得税抵免（EITC）的扩大通常与孕产妇心理健康状况的改善相关，但对于该计划影响这一结果的机制却知之甚少。EITC可能主要通过家庭财务资源的变化、劳动力供给的变化或参与者医疗保险覆盖范围的变化来影响心理健康。我们试图通过评估州和联邦EITC扩大对按孕产妇婚姻状况划分的心理健康、就业和医疗保险的影响来理清这些机制。我们发现，联邦EITC的扩大与所有母亲自我报告的心理健康改善相关，对未婚母亲的就业有很大的积极影响。州EITC的扩大仅与已婚母亲的心理健康改善相关，对已婚或未婚母亲的就业没有影响。总体而言，对于大多数母亲亚组，我们发现EITC扩大与医疗保险覆盖范围的变化之间几乎没有关联。这些发现表明，虽然EITC的扩大通过信贷和就业效应的结合改善了未婚母亲的心理健康，但对于已婚母亲来说，心理健康的改善仅由直接信贷驱动。
