Children Costs in a One-Adult Household: Empirical Evidence from the UK

Anderson Vil ()
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Anderson Vil: PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris

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Abstract: This paper addresses two central questions in family and economic policy. First, to what extent are estimates of the cost of children derived from two-parent households applicable to single-parent families? Second, are estimated patterns of intra-household resource allocation consistent with benefit rules that condition support uniformly on family size? To address these questions, I propose a collective consumption model for one-adult households, apply it to three datasets—the Family Expenditure Survey, the Expenditures and Food Survey, and the Living Costs and Food Survey in the UK—and present two key findings. First, child cost estimates derived from two-parent households remain externally valid for single-parent families, at least for single mothers. Second, the results find no evidence of per-child resource dilution by family size once estimation uncertainty is accounted for, with differences for fathers appearing only among households at the bottom of the expenditure distribution.

Keywords: Identification; Resource sharing; Economies of scale; Shadow price; Collective Model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-04
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