Several welfare programs in the United States restrict eligibility to single-parent families. This paper asks whether eliminating this restriction for Medicaid encourages marriage. I identify Medicaid's effect through a series of health insurance reforms that were passed in the 1980s and 1990s targeting young children. These reforms were associated with an increase in the probability of marriage of 1. 7 percentage points. While the expansions offered some incentives to become married, they also created other incentives to become divorced (known as the "independence effect"). After controlling for the outflows from marriage due to the independence effect, the estimated effect increases by 10 percent.

Aaron S. Yelowitz is an assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He thanks participants at the American Economic Association, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, National Bureau of Economic Research, the Population Association of America, RAND, and University of California, Los Angeles for helpful comments. Joshua Angrist, Janet Currie, David Cutler, Peter Diamond, Leora Friedberg, Frances Goldscheider, Jerry Hausman, Caroline Minter Hoxby, Hilary Hoynes, Wei-Yin Hu, Jacob Klerman, Lee Lillard, Steven Pischke, James Poterba, T. Paul Schultz, Anne Winkler, Duncan Thomas, and two anonymous referees provided helpful comments. Jonathan Gruber deserves special mention for his input. Gloria Chiang and Sheri Zwirlein provided excellent proofreading. The National Institute on Aging and the UCLA Academic Senate graciously provided financial support. The data used in this article can be obtained from the author between March 1999 through February 2002 at the following address: Department of Economics, University of California, Los Angeles, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1477.