The Lock-in Effect of Marriage: Work Incentives after Saying “I Do”

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The main problem of reviewed contrubution  is that the authors do not seem to notice the purpose of tax preferences on the family character.
I explain that this is a preference aimed at supporting the family, and not supporting the individual forming the family. Otherwise, these preferences would not apply. Authors do not take into account cultural differences in the compared countries. The analysis of legal solutions is very superficial and causes that the final conclusions are also superficial. I have the impression that the article was written under the thesis contained in the Gender Equality Strategy 2020-2025 and the position of the European Parliament. The authors do not bother to deal intellectually with the above positions, they only duplicate the previously adopted theses.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thanks a lot for all the valuable comments and suggestions. Please find attached our detailed responses.

On behalf of all co-authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The topic discussed in this paper is very interesting and important in the context of labor market analysis.

In overall terms, my opinion is very positive. The paper is well organized and the empirical analysis is sound and produce useful results.

My major concern regards the final section of the paper, by far the poorest of the study. From my point of view, it requires a full revision, providing a closer link with previous literature on related topics and more useful insights for policy action. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thanks a lot for all the valuable comments and suggestions. Please find attached our detailed responses.

On behalf of all co-authors,

Silvia De Poli

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Your manuscript tackles an important topic, thank you for writing it. Here are several suggestions that may help you in the future iterations of your work:

- currently, the manuscript is full of causal statements (e.g., "impact of marriage-related tax benefit instruments"), even though the analysis is by no means causal. Reverse causality, in particular, is a key concern that needs to be discussed, and the language needs to be toned down accordingly. You are working with a very selective set of (predominantly catholic) countries, and as such it might very well be the case that these fiscal systems are aligned to the preferences of the population. In other words, it may not be the marriage bonus that causes low female labour participation, but rather the low female labour participation that (partially) causes the marriage bonus. Naturally, it is not to be expected that the reverse causality explains the association completely (the incentives still matter), however, the reader should be pointed to the possibility of reverse causality distorting the picture. 

- To make your results more convincing, I would recommend switching from tabulations to the regression analysis, and expanding your sample also to the other European countries (there is no reason to exclude them). If the marriage bonus has the purported effect, then the countries with no marriage bonus hold useful information (posing as a counterfactual group for the countries currently analyzed). 

Minor points: 

- being unemployed and being out of the labour force are distinct concepts. You want to use the latter to define the NRR.

- METRs for Belgian women appear to be too high

- the Pensioner households in Figure 1 spring out of nowhere, please motivate why this is relevant for the analysis and how you account for it. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thanks a lot for all the valuable comments and suggestions. Please find attached our detailed responses.

On behalf of all co-authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for engaging with my comments.

Minor comments:

the acronyms (METR, NRR, etc) should be introduced in the text before they are used.

The manuscript needs English copyediting ('prawn to errors', 'lower career prospects', etc.)