Childlessness, childfreeness and compensation

Marie-Louise Leroux, Pierre Pestieau and Gregory Ponthiere

No 2019024, LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Abstract: We study the design of a fair family policy in an economy where parent-hood is regarded either as desirable or as undesirable, and where there is imperfect fertility control, leading to involuntary childlessness/parenthood. Using an equivalent consumption approach in the consumption-fertility space, we rst show that the identi cation of the worst-o¤ individuals is not robust to how the social evaluator xes the reference fertility level. Adopting the ex post egalitarian social criterion, which gives priority to the worst o¤ in realized terms, we then examine the compensation for involuntary childlessness/parenthood. Unlike real-world family policies, a fair family policy does not always involve positive family allowances to (voluntary) parents, and may also, under some reference fertility lev-els, involve positive childlessness allowances. Our results are robust to assuming asymmetric information and to introducing Assisted Reproductive Technologies.

Keywords: fertility; childlessness; family policy; compensation; fairness. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I38 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-12-17
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem and nep-lab
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https://sites.uclouvain.be/core/publications/coredp/coredp2019.html (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Childlessness, Childfreeness and Compensation (2023)
Journal Article: Childlessness, childfreeness and compensation (2022)
Working Paper: Childlessness, Childfreeness and Compensation (2020)
Working Paper: Childlessness, Childfreeness and Compensation (2019)
Working Paper: Childlessness, Childfreeness and Compensation (2019)
Working Paper: Childlessness, Childfreeness and Compensation (2019)
Working Paper: Childlessness, Childfreeness and Compensation (2019)
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