Abstract

In Germany, the choice of withholding tax classes allows married couples to increase unemployment benefits for one partner at the expense of the other partner. We document that this mechanism is essentially unknown by eliciting in a survey that less than 5% of the interviewed individuals are aware of this relationship. At the same time, more than 60% of the married couples shift unemployment benefits from one partner to the other. We document that this choice for households results in a substantial implicit gender bias along the whole income distribution.