Does custody law affect family behavior in and out of marriage?

René Böheim, Marco Francesconi and Martin Halla

No 2012-15, NRN working papers from The Austrian Center for Labor Economics and the Analysis of the Welfare State, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria

Abstract: We examine the effect of joint custody on marriage, divorce, fertility and female employment in Austria using individual-level administrative data, covering the entire population. We also use unique data obtained from court records to analyze the effect on post-divorce outcomes. Our estimates show that joint custody significantly reduces divorce and female employment rates, significantly increases marriage and marital birth rates, and leads to a substantial increase in the total money transfer received by mothers after divorce. We interpret these results as evidence against Becker-Coase bargains and in support of a mechanism driven by a resource redistribution that favors men giving them greater incentives to invest in marriage specific capital.

Keywords: Divorce; Fertility; Bargaining; Intrahousehold Allocations; Austria (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J13 J18 K36 N32 R2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2012-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem and nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.labornrn.at/wp/2012/wp1215.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Does Custody Law Affect Family Behavior In and Out of Marriage? (2013)
Working Paper: Does Custody Law Affect Family Behavior In and Out of Marriage? (2013)
Working Paper: Does Custody Law Affect Family Behavior In and Out of Marriage? (2012)
Working Paper: Does Custody Law Affect Family Behavior In and Out of Marriage? (2012)
Working Paper: Does custody law affect family behavior in and out of marriage? (2012)
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:jku:nrnwps:2012_15

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NRN working papers from The Austrian Center for Labor Economics and the Analysis of the Welfare State, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by René Böheim ().