Only 60 percent of children are born to married mothers, compared with 94 percent in 1963. In 2021, 40 percent of 17-year-olds with native-born parents had spent some part of their childhood without one or both biological parents. The increase in family disruption has had untold emotional, psychological, and social consequences.

To promote marriage, policymakers should reform the earned income tax credit (EITC) schedules that determine how EITC amounts vary with income, number of children, and parents’ marital status. Benefits for all married couples should be based on one schedule, regardless of how many children are in the family, using the current, more generous, schedule for married parents with three or more children. In addition, more married-couple families should receive the maximum EITC amount before the schedule phases out, which would make fewer parents subject to a penalty for marrying. These changes would incentivize marital childbearing by making the lifetime amount of EITC benefits much larger for married parents than for single parents. Most notably, the reform would incentivize people to have and raise their first child in marriage, since the increase in the EITC over current policy would be largest for a family with one child. If these marriages stuck, then subsequent births would also occur within marriage. By tying this super-schedule to individual earnings, the incentives would be even stronger.