Economics of the family

We extend recent research on relationships between living arrangements and the economic well-being of single-parent families in the U.S. by using comparable data from five countries and by examining measures of wealth in addition to income. Preliminary tabulations of harmonized data from the Cross-National Equivalent File (CNEF) demonstrate marked cross-national differences in the living arrangements of unpartnered parents, with lone-parent families relatively common in Germany and coresidence with parents most common in Korea. There are also clear differences in the economic benefits that single parents derive from coresidence with parents, which are most pronounced in Korea and relatively limited in the U.S. Findings from this project will have implications for understanding the ways in which demographic change and living arrangements contribute to differences in levels and trends in income and wealth accumulation across countries and in comparison to the United States.

We examine the role of intergenerational coresidence in shaping the economic well-being of single mothers in Japan. Using data from a large national survey, we begin by demonstrating that the “official” poverty rate for single mothers (which is based on those living alone) overstates the poverty rate of all single mothers by about 50%. We then show that the poverty rate of mothers would have declined if the prevalence and poverty rates of single-mother families had not increased in recent years. Finally, we demonstrate that 90% of single-mothers coresiding with parents would fall below the poverty line without the shared income of parents and show that public income support plays a very small role in limiting poverty among single-mothers. These results have important implications for understanding poverty and inequality in Japan and other countries like the U.S. where public support for families is limited and intergenerational coresidence is relatively common.

The Canadian province of Québec, the second most populous, to increase mother’s participation in the labour market and to enhance child development, implemented in 1997 a $5 per day universal childcare policy. Over time, the age requirement for subsidized spaces progressively decreased and the number of subsidized spaces increased. By September 2000, the low-fee policy applied to all children aged 0 to 4. By March 2012, the number of regulated-subsidized paces reached 225,107, a 211 percentage increase over 1997. In 2008 78% of children aged 1 to 4 were in low-fee childcare. The policy has significantly increased the labour force participation and annual weeks worked of mothers. We use Statistics Canada’s annual 1997 to 2009 Survey on households spending to: a) document the raising share of mothers’ income in total income of households in Québec compared to similar families in the other provinces; b) estimate the impact of the policy (treatment and control groups) based on an IV instrumental technique (generalized method of moments) on expenditures items. The results show that more income in the hands of women impacts on the structure of expenditures within the household, raised budget shares on children and collective family goods and services.

The rising cost of marriage in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has recently received a considerable amount of attention in both academic and policy circles. Much of this discussion has focused on the challenges young men in MENA face in accumulating sufficient funds to marry, whereas relatively little research has focused on women’s contributions to the costs of marriage and how these may affect their marriage outcomes. In order to address this gap, in this paper I use a rich dataset from Egypt to examine the relationship between women's participation in wage work prior to marriage and two key marriage outcomes: women's and their families' contributions to total marriage costs, and the timing of marriage. The results indicate that women’s employment prior to marriage is associated with the bride's side, and particularly the bride herself, contributing a greater percentage of the total COM without this contribution leading to any return in terms of speeding up the marriage process. The key question raised by this study is therefore whether contributing a greater percentage of the COM is seen to bring women other benefits in marriage, or whether working women are in fact disadvantaged on the marriage market.

Previous research has shown considerable marriage premiums in earnings for men, but often penalties for women of being in a union. In this study we extend this research by analyzing how the age difference between spouses affects the earnings profiles of men and women. As we follow people over time in advance as well as within their marriage we are able to separate pre- from post-marital earnings movements. The data consists of information on annual earnings 1990-2009 for all Swedes born 1960-1974. The results seem to indicate that age-homogamy is best for earnings, for both men and women. Quite interestingly, age-heterogamy has similar effects of earnings regardless of which spouse is being oldest. However, most of these results are explained by assortative mating, in which men and women with greater earnings potentials find partners of a similar age. Overall, the age-difference between spouses seems to have a very limited causal effect on individual earnings.

Willingness to pay data are rarely collected or used as part of designing health insurance schemes in developing countries. The objective of this study was to assess household heads’ willingness to pay for community health insurance and its determinants in rural communities in Nigeria.
It was a descriptive cross-sectional study carried out among household heads in rural communities. Sample size of 360 was determined using Fishers formula and multistage sampling technique was used to select respondents. Semi structured interviewer administered questionnaire was used and data analysis was done using Epi-info version 3.4.1. Frequency tables and cross-tabulations were generated with a p-value pre-determined at less than 0.05.
The mean Willingness to Pay was 522.0 + 266.3 Naira and the allowable range for fixing premium is between 250 naira and 1,200 naira. The factors that affect Willingness to pay were age, sex, educational attainment, income, household size, and past health expenditure of household heads.
The amount of premium that should be fixed for Community Health Insurance in these rural communities should range between 250 naira to 1,200 Naira and a mechanism should be worked out such that there will be differential payment based on the age, sex, educational attainment, income, and household size in the registration.

Households transfer substantial wealth between generations under various motives. Apart from life cycle consumption smoothing and old age security purposes, parents transfer wealth to children with motivations of altruism, exchange, strategic or risk sharing. Theoretically, altruism predicts a one to one correspondence between parental income and child income. Under exchange, transfer is positively related to the services provided by the child. When strategic motive is operative, the ex ante transfer is motivated by the services provided by each child. This paper empirically examines the transfer motives in India using a 2006-07 primary data from 315 urban households. The decision on transfer is estimated by Probit equation and the size of transfer is estimated by Tobit equation with parental and child characteristics. The estimated results show that the basic motivation for transfer is one of exchange. Indian households exchange wealth largely for the support and services provided by the children.