The Impact of Children on Australian Couples' Wealth Accumulation

Alfred Dockery and Sherry Bawa ()
Additional contact information
Sherry Bawa: School of Economics and Finance, Curtin University

No WP1302, Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre Working Paper series from Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School

Abstract: Existing estimates of the cost of raising children mainly focus on what parents spend on their children. This paper challenges the conceptual basis for this approach, and instead investigates how the presence of children impacts upon couples’ wealth accumulation using the life-cycle approach and Australian household panel data. Both the results presented here for Australia and those contained in the existing literature suggest that raising a family has a very small impact upon wealth accumulation relative to the ‘cost’ implied from expenditure-based estimates. In reconciling these highly divergent estimates, we argue the estimates from the wealth approach make more intuitive sense on a number of fronts, with implications for families and policy.

Keywords: children; family; wealth; lifecycle model; savings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I32 J13 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2013-06
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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http://ftprepec.drivehq.com/ozl/bcecwp/downloads/WP1302.pdf First version, 2013 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Impact of Children on Australian Couples’ Wealth Accumulation (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ozl:bcecwp:wp1302

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