The Stress Cost of Children

Hielke Buddelmeyer, Daniel Hamermesh and Mark Wooden

No 21223, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We use longitudinal data describing couples in Australia from 2001-12 and Germany from 2002-12 to examine how demographic events affect perceived time and financial stress. Consistent with the view of measures of stress as proxies for the Lagrangean multipliers in models of household production, we show that births increase time stress, especially among mothers, and that the effects last at least several years. Births generally also raise financial stress slightly. The monetary equivalent of the costs of the extra time stress is very large. While the departure of a child from the home reduces parents’ time stress, its negative impacts on the tightness of the time constraints are much smaller than the positive impacts of a birth.

JEL-codes: I31 J12 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-lab and nep-ltv
Note: LS
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Published as Hielke Buddelmeyer, Daniel S. Hamermesh, Mark Wooden, THE stress cost of children on moms and dads, European Economic Review, 2017, , ISSN 0014-2921, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2016.12.012.

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Working Paper: The Stress Cost of Children (2015)
Working Paper: The Stress Cost of Children (2015)
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