Holding the Pencil or Buying Paint: Parental Childcare Versus Children’s Need for Extra Income. The Case of Belgium, Denmark and Spain

Joris Ghysels ()

Review of Economics of the Household, 2005, vol. 3, issue 3, 269-289

Abstract: This article addresses the influence of child characteristics on couples’ decision-making regarding employment and parental childcare. Through simultaneous equation modeling we are able to separate earnings from care motives in this decision-making process. An empirical exercise on Belgian data illustrates how the earnings motive counteracts the care motive and causes a rise in the probability of a full-time job following an increase of the number of children. However, replication on Danish and Spanish data also suggests that a country’s incentive framework provides important limits to couples’ decision-making. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2005

Keywords: time allocation; household production; labor supply; childcare; D13; J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11150-005-3458-y

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