Gender-targeted transfers by default? Evidence from a child allowance reform in Sweden

Erica Lindahl (), Olof Rosenqvist () and Håkan Selin
Additional contact information
Erica Lindahl: IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy, Postal: Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy, P O Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden
Olof Rosenqvist: IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy, Postal: Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy, P O Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden

No 2023:4, Working Paper Series from IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy

Abstract: We exploit a sharp birthday discontinuity in a large and universal Swedish cash transfer program, creating plausibly exogenous variation in the default disbursement option, while holding entitlements and other financial incentives constant. When the cash transfer is paid out to the mother by default, instead of a 50/50 default, it has a huge effect on the probability that the transfer is deposited in the mother’s bank account also in the long run. Surprisingly, we find that the default policy redistributes resources to separated low-income mothers. We find no indications that the 100%-to-the-mother default induces mothers to work less or to take more responsibility for the children.

Keywords: Gender targeting; family transfers; default; child allowance; gender equality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 H31 J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2023-03-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-gen and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ifau.se/globalassets/pdf/se/2023/wp-20 ... reform-in-sweden.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Gender-targeted transfers by default? - Evidence from a child allowance reform in Sweden (2023)
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:hhs:ifauwp:2023_004

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy IFAU, P O Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ali Ghooloo ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).