Gender Power, Fertility, and Family Policy

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The birth of children often shifts the power balance within a family. If family decisions are made according to the spouses' welfare function, this shift in power may lead to a time consistency problem. The allocation of resources after the birth of children may differ from the ex-ante optimal choice. In a model of cooperative decision making within a family, we show that this time consistency problem leads to a systematic downward bias in fertility choices. By keeping fertility low, families try to mitigate the ex-ante undesired shift in the power balance. This bias in fertility choices provides scope for welfare enhancing policy intervention. We discuss the extent to which existing measures in family policy are suitable to overcome the fertility bias. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor mayJEL-Code: D130, H310, J130.

Bargaining over Babies: Theory, Evidence, and Policy Implications

“…10 See, for example, Becker and Barro (1988) and Barro and Becker (1989). 11 A recent paper along similar lines is Kemnitz and Thum (2014). Dynamic models of fertility choice that also include implications for the marriage market have been developed by Greenwood, Guner, and Knowles (2003), Caucutt, Guner, and Knowles (2002), and Guner and Knowles (2009).…”

Daddy months

“…First of all, we ask whether the introduction of daddy months is superior to alternative policy instruments as noted in Kemnitz and Thum (2015). Since the overwhelming exclusive use of parental care during the first year of the infant suggests to neglect the instruments of subsidizing only parental care or subsidizing external child care, the key alternative consists in increasing the transfer to the mother so as to raise her bargaining power.…”

“…The paper closest to ours in spirit is that of Kemnitz and Thum (2015), investigating changes in the balance of power of spouses, inducing inefficiently low fertility. They consider child allowances, maternal care benefits, and formal child care subsidies as alternative instruments to overcome the inefficiency.…”

Intrahousehold Decision Making and Fertility

“…Kemnitz and Thum (2014) pursue similar ideas to study the effects of family policy. In their model, the Pareto weight of the spouses is a function of earnings.…”

“…In the first period they decide about the number of children, and in the second period the allocation of consumption and the purchase of child care are chosen. Kemnitz and Thum (2014) argue that the sequentiality of the decision process causes fertility to be too low for couples with low wage females. Couples where the wife has high earnings and works full time face a different decision process for fertility, since these couples buy childcare and the number of children does not affect ex-post bargaining power.…”