 Demand for domestic help services: Evidence from a natural experimentSiramane Coulibaly, Bernard Fortin and Maripier Isabelle Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2025, vol. 238, issue C Abstract: We investigate how an increase in subsidies for purchasing domestic help services affects the consumption of individuals who need assistance to live at home. Drawing on administrative data, we analyse the impact of a reform implemented in Quebec (Canada) in 2016, which made the program more generous for a subgroup of beneficiaries. For this purpose, we estimate a difference-in-differences lognormal hurdle model. We derive the corresponding average treatment effect on the treated for this class of non-linear models. Our results suggest that the price elasticity of the demand for subsidized domestic help services for the treated is around 0.74. The elasticity of monthly purchase frequency (0.59) is much larger than the elasticity of monthly purchase intensity (0.14). Based on our results, we determine a floor to the marginal external benefit required for the reform to be socially worth adopting. Keywords: Domestic help services; Home support; Lognormal hurdle model; Nonlinear difference-in-differences (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:238:y:2025:i:c:s0167268125003531 DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107234 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D. More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier |
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