Marriage in Old Age: What Can We Learn About Policy Impacts on Same-Sex Couples?

Abstract

Tax or transfer benefits in the United States are often conditioned on marital status, creating complicated incentives that reward marriage for some couples and penalize it for others. Same-sex couples, who only recently gained the right to marry, now face the same marriage incentives that different-sex couples faced for decades. We highlight marriage incentives affecting older couples, who have rarely been studied. Using the American Community Survey, we estimate decreases in the propensity to marry among older, previously married women, which are consistent with remarriage disincentives from Social Security and marriage disincentives from Medicaid that are more salient for women.