Having it all, for all: child-care subsidies and income distribution reconciled

Helmuth Cremer, Francesca Barigozzi and Kerstin Roeder

No 13675, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: This paper studies the design of child-care policies when redistribution matters. Traditional mothers provide some informal child care, whereas career mothers purchase full time formal care in the market. The sorting of women across career paths is endogenous and shaped by a social norm about gender roles in the family. Via this social norm traditional mothers' informal child care imposes an externality on career mothers, so that the market outcome is inefficient. Informal care is too large and the group of career mothers is too small so that inefficiency and gender inequality go hand in hand. In a first-best, full information word redistribution across couples and efficiency are separable. Redistribution is performed via lump-sum transfers and taxes which are designed to equalize utilities across all couples. The efficient allocation of child care is obtained by subsidizing formal care at a Pigouvian rate. However, in a second-best settings, we show that a trade-off between the reduction of gender inequality and redistributive considerations emerge. The optimal uniform subsidy is lower than the "Pigouvian" level. Under a nonlinear policy the first-best "Pigouvian" rule for the (marginal) subsidy on informal care is reestablished. While the share of high career mothers continues to be distorted downward for incentive reasons, this policy is effective in reconciling the objectives of reducing the child care related gender inequalities and achieving a more equal income distribution across couples.

Keywords: Child care; Women's career choices; Child care subsidies; Redistribution; Social norms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 H23 J16 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP13675 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Having it all, for all: Child-care subsidies and income distribution reconciled (2020)
Working Paper: Having it all, for all: child-care subsidies and income distribution reconciled (2020)
Working Paper: Having It All, for All: Child-Care Subsidies and Income Distribution Reconciled (2019)
Working Paper: Having it all, for all: child-care subsidies and income distribution reconciled (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13675

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP13675

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().