White couples’ marriage bonuses reflect a single-wage-earner archetype built into tax policy

Evidence

For white households with incomes up to 50,000, a higher percentage of single-wage-earner households are eligible for tax breaks than coequal-earner households. More than 40 percent of white married households earning between 200,001 and $1 million get tax cuts when they marry, while less than 20 percent pay a penalty. The overwhelming majority of that 40 percent are eligible for a marriage bonus because their marriages mirror a historical archetype of a single wage earner with a stay-at-home spouse that traces its roots back to tax policy decisions made in the first half of the twentieth century. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 145

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the ‘marriage bonus vs. marriage penalty’ framework and its roots in a historical single-earner archetype.