Does Cutting Child Benefits Reduce Fertility in Larger Families? Evidence from the UK’s Two-Child Limit

Mary Reader (), Jonathan Portes and Ruth Patrick ()
Additional contact information
Mary Reader: London School of Economics
Ruth Patrick: University of York

No 15203, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We study the impact of restricting child-related social assistance to the first two children in the family on the fertility of third and subsequent births. As of April 2017, all third and subsequent born children to low-income families in the UK did not receive means-tested child benefits, amounting to a reduction in income relative to the previous system of approximately 3000 GBP a year per child. We use administrative births microdata and household survey data to estimate the impact of the two-child limit on higher-order births with a triple differences approach, exploiting variation over date of birth, socio-economic status, and birth order. We find some evidence that the policy led to a small decline in higher-order fertility among lowincome families. However, compared to earlier research in the UK and elsewhere, largely based on benefit increases, the impact is small. This may be due to informational barriers or to other economic and social constraints affecting low income families. Our results imply that the main impact of cuts to child benefits is not to reduce fertility but to withdraw income from low-income families, with potential implications for child poverty.

Keywords: fertility; family size; social assistance; welfare reform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H31 H53 J13 J18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2022-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem and nep-eur
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp15203.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:iza:izadps:dp15203

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().