Economics of the family

This paper starts form stylized facts showing that savings rates of households headed by women are smaller than those headed by men which suggest a disadvantageous position for feminine households to confront adverse situations in the future. In order to answer if household savings determinants differ between those headed by men or women, a probability logistic model of savings was estimated with income of household proxied by education level, other incomes from other household integrants, credits, government transferences and remittances from the migrant laborers and, demographic factors like marital status, presence of babies and children in schooling ages as independent variables. This paper shows that there are some substantive differences in the effects of the independent variables upon the probability of household savings in men´s and women headed households. The most important differences being education level with a mayor impact in households with a feminine head, other members of the household incomes. The remittances from the USA work in the same direction which suggests that these may be filling the vacuum left by migrant men. Contrariwise the presence of small children, government transferences, access to credit diminish the probability of saving for women.

The rising cost of children is considered a reason for declining fertility. This paper assess the incremental time cost of children for Italian and French couples’, according to children’s number and age. Using the Italian Time Use Survey (2002-03) and the French one (1998-99) we select a subsample of respectively 4,827 and 2,417 either married or cohabiting couples: 22% of them are childless, while the others have at least a child under 13 years old. As an increase in parents’ total work means a corresponding compression of both pure leisure and time for personal care, the marginal time cost of children is calculated by comparing the total daily workload (paid and unpaid work) of couples with and without children. Each cost is measured first on the couple and secondly on each partner in a gender perspective. We run three separate OLS models on time dedicated to childcare, to unpaid work and to total work. Controlling for a plurality of covariates, results seem to corroborate the hypothesis that Italian children are more time-intensive than the French ones ( especially if they are infant and higher parities) and that Italian women bear a higher part of these costs than the French ones.

Utilizing longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), this article examines the relationship between parental wealth and intergenerational income mobility for black and white families. I find that total parental wealth promotes upward mobility for low-income white families, but does not protect against downward mobility for white families from the top half of the income distribution. Conversely, I find that total parental wealth does not assist low-income black families while home ownership may have negative associations with the likelihood of upward mobility for these families. However, for black families from the top half of the income distribution home equity is protective against downward mobility suggesting a heterogeneous relationship between home ownership and mobility for black families.

This paper studies the link between the perception of raising child and saving rates of Chinese households. The high saving rate in China has recently received much attention. This paper proposes a possible explanation for the high saving rate among middle aged households in China – their old age support motive. Using a unique data set collected by survey teams in 11 provinces in China, we argue that the two possible drivers for the high saving rates are the lack of financial development and the declining reliability on children as old age support/insurance. An old age support perception index is created using our survey data. Using two stage regression analyses, we find divergent saving patterns between households with sons and daughters. Households with son(s) save significantly less than those with daughters. The saving rate further decreases if the parents have a strong expectation of receiving old age support from their grownup sons in the future. Using data on inter-generational transfers from the same survey, we further demonstrate that parents in regions with high perception index do receive more cash transfers from their grownup sons. Interesting, for families with daughters, the effect is negative.

This paper re-examines the relationship between maternal employment and child survival in India. It examines differences in survival to age five between children of working and non-working mothers. Also, it examines which aspects of maternal employment (e.g. work location or occupational category) are more relevant to understanding child survival. Data come from India’s National Family Health Survey. Formation of comparison groups (e.g. non-working vs. working mothers) is aided by propensity score matching, and differences between matched groups in child survival are estimated through survival analysis. In urban areas, results show higher risk of dying for children of working mothers as compared to children of non-working mothers. No similar relationship was found in rural areas. Also, results show that some aspects of employment increase the risk of mortality more than other: working at home (but not away from home) or working in low-status occupation is associated with increased risk of child mortality.

Much research has shown that the relationship between women’s economic prospects and marriage formation has shifted from negative to positive in the western societies in the last few decades in the Western societies. Theoretical framework used to explain the phenomena in developed countries has gradually shifted from Gary Becker’s gender specialization model to V. K. Oppenheimer’s mate searching theory. Drawing data from the 2006 and 2008 Chinese General Social Survey, we investigate circumstances across cohorts of Chinese men and women born between 1940 and 1979. Our findings show different patterns in China. Educational attainment delays women’s marriage formation, but accelerates men’s entering marriage. However, other economic indicators, including occupation, have negative effects on both men’s and women’s marriage formation. We argue that neither model can explain marriage formation patterns in China without the understanding of the unique Chinese socioeconomic and cultural context, and that contextually relevant theories and hypotheses should be developed.

In the patriarchal society of India, where male has the right of inheritance on property, headship of the household is also transferable to the male heir. A household is headed by female mostly due to loss of male breadwinner. Around 73 Per cent of female headed household is headed by widow and 12 per cent is headed by those, whose spouse is absent. Gendered vulnerability of households is reflected by the data of income, expenditure and assets, which shows that female headed household is on disadvantage on all the dimension of well being. The direct reason of poverty of female headed household can be observed in dependency of their household in the source of income which gives low return or work-force participation of head of household. Findings from logistic regression suggest that education, land-holdings, area of residence and source of livelihood are the important determinant which explain poverty among both male and female headed household, however marital status of head has emerged as an important determinant of poverty, which shows vulnerability among the household headed by widowed. This paper voices the duality of vulnerability faced by female and her household thus presents the less focused but important aspects of gender and demographic processes.

The analysis is based on register data comprising all Norwegian married and cohabiting couples whose first common child was born in the period 1987 – 2001. We analyze the sharing of breadwinning responsibilities within the couple at three stages of the family cycle: the year the first common child was born, two years after and six years after. We define the following four groups of breadwinning models: I Traditional (mother’s income amounts to 35 percent or less of father’s income), II “Equality light” (mother’s income amounts to between 35 and 80 percent of father’s income), III Equal (mother’s income amounts to between 80 and 120 percent of father’s income) and IV Untraditional (mother’s income amounts to more than 120 percent of father’s income, including couples where father’s income = 0). We investigate to what extent the couples’ distribution on breadwinning models are influenced by socioeconomic resources, defined as couple’s education (combined classification) and father’s income, marital status (married or cohabiting), as well as family changes after the initial year – like additional children born and transition to marriage for cohabitants. We also include several demographic variables as control variables.

This paper contributes to the comparative research on the money pooling practices among married and cohabiting couples. Specifically, it compares married and cohabiting couples in the francophone province of Quebec and in the rest of Canada. These regions provide an excellent opportunity for comparative research given their profound socio-cultural differences. The levels of cohabitation in English speaking Canada are moderate whereas Quebec is the society with the highest proportion of cohabiting couples in the world. Moreover, the two regions differ in their legal systems (Common Law principles versus Civil Code) and regulation of cohabitation. The analysis is based on the 2011 General Social Survey that includes a set of questions on the money management and income pooling in the household as well as the full conjugal and fertility histories of respondents.

Marital separations and divorces have dramatically increased during the last decades. The way they affect the economic situation of both men and women in an asymmetric way has been analysed in the literature (Uunk, 2004). However two points remain unexplored. Most studies on living standards after divorce do not take well into account child and spousal support payments. Second, in the case of divorce, it is often difficult to recover individuals who move, and then to compare the economic situation of both partners following the separation. The French administrative income-tax dataset we use enables us to overcome these two difficulties. We select all the divorcees whose divorce occurred in 2009 (around 65,000 couples), and we matched them with the previous year and the year after in order to compute the living standard variation. We then analyse to what extent alimony (reported in the tax return) do play their role in balancing living standards between the two spouses after divorce, offsetting possible economic inequalities. This analysis would be a way to assess the efficiency of the child support scale recently introduced in France. We also investigate the income sharing between the two spouses before and after the divorce, using difference in differences methods and Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition.