The taxation system was used in the past to try to address 
differences in cost of living between single men and men with 
children.  The term often used was the Bachelor Tax.

One example: From "Bachelorhood And Its Discontents"
by Christopher Orlet (July 2008)
New English Review
"In puritan New England, according to Howard P. Chudacoff's The Age 
of the Bachelor, those who indulged in the "selfish luxury of 
solitary living" were forced under penalty of law to live in 
"well-ordered households" as boarders and made to pay the despised 
bachelor tax."

James Alvey