Can Child Care Policy Encourage Employment and Fertility? Evidence from a Structural Model

Peter Haan and Katharina Wrohlich

No 4503, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In this paper we develop a structural model of female employment and fertility which accounts for intertemporal feedback effects between the two outcomes. We identify the effect of financial incentives on the employment and fertility decision by exploiting variation in the tax and transfer system which differs by employment state and number of children. To this end we simulate in detail the effects of the tax and transfer system including child care costs. The model provides estimates of structural preferences of women which can be used to study the effect of various policy reforms. In particular, we show that increasing child care subsidies conditional on employment increases labor supply of all women as well as fertility of the childless and highly educated women.

Keywords: fertility; financial incentives; employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 C25 J22 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2009-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Published - published in: Labour Economics, 2011, 18 (4), 498-512

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp4503.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Can child care policy encourage employment and fertility?: Evidence from a structural model (2011)
Working Paper: Can child care policy encourage employment and fertility? Evidence from a structural model (2009)
Working Paper: Can Child Care Policy Encourage Employment and Fertility?: Evidence from a Structural Model (2009)
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:dp4503

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 ().