Killingsworth, Mark R. 1976. "Must a Negative Income Tax Reduce Labor Supply? A Study of the Family's Allocation of Time." Journal of Human Resources 11(3):354-365.

Models of labor-supply behavior of single persons predict that a negative income tax (NIT) will always reduce the labor supply and earnings of such persons. I consider three models of family labor supply and find that, in all three, an NIT might raise a given family member's labor supply and might also raise total family labor supply. In one model, and NIT could even raise total family earnings. These models and recent empirical estimates (showing positive NIT effects on some family members' labor supply and on some families' earnings) suggest that the work disincentive effects and the cost of an NIT may be less that has previously been thought.

The author is Instructor of Economics, Barnard College, Columbia University, and Research Fellow, Industrial Relations Section, Princeton University. While retaining full responsibility for the opinions expressed here, I thank T. A. Finegan, Daniel S. Hamermesh, Jane H. Leuthold, H. Gregg Lewis, Charles Mallar, and Fred M. Westfield for helpful comments and suggestions; and Kenneth C. Kehrer, director of research for the Gary Income Maintenance Experiment, for his encouragement. This research was supported by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare under Contract SRS 70-63 with the Indiana Department of Welfare and Indiana University Northwest.

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