Childcare and Commitment within Households

Paula Gobbi ()
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Paula Gobbi: UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)

No 2013019, LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES from Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)

Abstract: Parental time with children increases with the education of both the mother and the father. As the education of parents increases, the gap between childcare supplied by mothers relative to that supplied by fathers decreases. A two steps semi-cooperative marital decision model is proposed to explain these two facts. First, parents collectively choose the amount of labor to supply and, in a second step, each of them chooses the amount of childcare as the outcome of a Cournot game. This framework gives rise to indeterminacy of the equilibrium and four selection criteria are proposed: one of a machist society, one of a feminist society, one of a random equilibrium and a last one that estimates the degree of social gender bias towards men. The semi-cooperative theoretical frameworks with the random selection criterion and the criterion that estimates the bias towards men provide the best match with the data.

Keywords: Childcare; Education; Commitment; Semi-Cooperative Model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J11 J13 J16 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51
Date: 2013-09-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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