Costs of children and Equivalence Scales: A Review of Methodological Issues and Australian Estimates

Matthew Gray and David Stanton ()

Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE), 2010, vol. 13, issue 1, 99-115

Abstract: Estimates of the costs of children are used in the design of a wide range of economic and social policies. This paper provides a review of the different approaches that have been used to define the costs of a child and the estimation methods used. The paper summarises the results of Australian estimates of the costs of children since 1985. An important conclusion is that there is no unambiguous ‘true cost’ of a child and that the estimated costs are sensitive to the estimation method used. One way of producing costs of children for policy purposes is to take the average of all available credible estimates. This approach is used in this paper.

Keywords: Measurement and Analysis of Poverty; Household Behaviour and Family Economics: Other; Welfare Economics: General (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D19 D60 I32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://ftprepec.drivehq.com/ozl/journl/downloads/AJLE131gray.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:ozl:journl:v:13:y:2010:i:1:p:99-115

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE) from Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sandie Rawnsley ().