Measuring the Impact of Child Care Subsidies on the Incomes of Mothers Returning to Work

The cost of child care is one of the greatest financial barriers faced by mothers returning to work. In recognition of this cost, the federal government provides child care subsidies to assist families to meet the cost of child care.
This paper models the use of child care services and the provision of child care subsidies to determine how effective the Australian government child care support programs are in reducing the financial barriers that make returning to work difficult for many mothers. Both childcare assistance and the newer childcare cash rebate are modelled. The impact of these assistance measures is examined for couples and sole parents on different incomes with one or two children in child care.
It was found that child care subsidies are highly progressive and make a substantial contribution to vertical equity by offsetting child care costs related to employment. They also contribute to horizontal equity, by providing greater assistance in meeting child care costs for families with more than one child in care, in recognition of their greater need. Sole parents derived the greatest benefit from child care subsidies, particularly those on low incomes working full-time and with two children in care.     

A Cost Function Analysis of the Australian Transportation Equipment Industry

This article investigates the existence of economies of scale and input cross and direct price elasticities of demand in the Australian motor vehicle industry. Our estimated cost elasticities were less than one (consistent with economies of scale), but not significantly less than one at the 10 per cent level for two versions of the model. However, the estimated cost elasticity was significantly less than one at approximately the 2.5 per cent level for a third. Thus, these results give some credibility to the infant industry argument for continued assistance to the Australian transportation equipment industry. A four-input model separating domestic and foreign intermediate goods inputs suggests that while restrictions on imported components may have given some short-run relief to the domestic components industry and increased the demand for labour domestically, they decreased the demand for domestic capital. Although the infant industry argument could support short-run protectionist policies for the industry, it appears that such policies regarding the Australian motor vehicle industry must be designed carefully with a specified phase-out period if long-term adverse results are to be avoided.     

International outsourcing and the demand for skills

This paper explores the impact of international outsourcing on the demand for skills in three small and open EU economies. A model of variable costs and factor demand functions for different skill levels and imported as well as domestic materials are constructed. International outsourcing is treated directly as a substitution process between labour of different skills and imported inputs. The direct consequence of international outsourcing for labour is measured by the cross price elasticities. These cross price elasticities indicate a negative outsourcing impact on low- and medium-skilled labour in the three countries and on high-skilled labour in two out of the three countries. This outsourcing effect on labour is compared with the direct effect of embodied technical change and of the technical change bias. International outsourcing has a more unambigous and significant negative impact on labour than technical change. Technical change is either labour using (embodied technical change) or only slightly biased in favour of high-skilled labour. When the cost savings effect of international outsourcing is taken into account, an indirect positive stimulus for all skill categories arises from a greater demand for goods. It can be shown, that this indirect positive effect can compensate for a large part of the negative substitution impact of international outsourcing on labour.     

Intertemporal production and intertemporal substitution in output supply and input demand

This article presents an intertemporal model of production with multiple inputs to investigate substitution opportunities facing firms over time. The firm’s intertemporal profit maximization problem is characterized with the familiar cost function, and various intertemporal substitution elasticities are delineated for output supply and input demand. The absence of intertemporal substitution in production can imply production smoothing, and allowance for intertemporal substitution in labour demand reinforces the prediction of the real business cycle model. For aggregate US manufacturing, we find substantial substitution in output supply and labour demand over time due to intertemporal changes in output price and wage rates.     

The role of labour demand elasticities in tax incidence analysis with heterogeneous labour

Whether labour bears full burden of household level income and consumption taxes ultimately depends on the degree of substitutability among different types of labour in production. We find more variation in incidence patterns across households with less than perfectly substitutable heterogeneous labour than with perfectly substitutable homogeneous labour in production. This finding is based on results obtained from homogeneous and heterogeneous labour general equilibrium tax models calibrated to decile level income and consumption distribution data of UK households for the year 1994. We use labour supply elasticities implied by the substitution elasticity in households' utility functions and derive labour demand elasticities from the substitution elasticity in the production function. First version received: March 1998/Final version received: April 1999     

Demand for Childcare Services and Labour Supply in Australian Families

This article provides empirical findings on non-parental childcare use and simulates the effect of childcare costs on labour supply in Australia.     

The Le Châtelier Principle and the Demand for Imports in the Short Run and the Medium Run: Australia, 1959–60–1978–79*

This paper examines the role of prices and factor endowments in the determination of Australian imports. We consider two factors, labour and capital. The supply of capital is assumed fixed, labour is assumed fixed in the short run. and variable in the medium run, Direct as well as indirect estimates of short-run and medium-run import price and quantity elasticities are derived. Allowance is made for technological change, and various separability hypotheses are tested. As predicted by the Le Châtelier Principle. the own price elasticity of imports is larger in the medium run than in the short run .     

Canadian contributions to family economics

Canadian scholars have made substantial contributions to the relatively new field of family economics. These include new models of how men and women match in marriage markets, and of how decisions are made in multi‐person households. Several were early contributors to the literature on married women's labour supply and labour supply in a family context, and helped to develop empirical methods in this area. A particular focus has been on the impacts of policy‐relevant parameters, such childcare costs, on family labour supply and child well‐being. New work on child development, the impact of early life conditions, and the processes of intergenerational transmission also highlight the importance of family context in determining economic well‐being.     

Reconsidering the Marginal Welfare Cost of Taxation*

A model with sticky wage rates and involuntary unemployment is used to compute the marginal cost of taxation, and these estimates are compared with those obtained from the conventional price-clearing equilibrium model. Important determinants of the marginal cost estimates are the response of sticky wages to a tax increase, the elasticity of demand for labour, and the unemployment gap. By contrast, the conventional model focuses on the elasticity of labour supply. The different models have different implications for efficient tax design. However, the new model generally agrees with the conventional model regarding significant efficiency costs of higher taxation.     

ESTIMATING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IMMIGRANT AND NATIVE WORKERS IN AUSTRALIA: A PRODUCTION THEORY APPROACH

The impact of immigration on labour markets depends, among other factors, on the substitutability or complementarity between immigrants and natives. This relationship is examined by treating migrant and native labour, along with capital, as inputs in production process. Estimated price elasticities of substitution between immigrants and native labour suggest that in Australian context, an increase in the wage rate of one group of workers leads to an increased demand for the other. The estimated elasticities of substitution between immigrant and native workers and the complementary relationship between immigrants and capital provide an insight into the complex effects of immigration.     

Dynamic factor demands and adjustment costs: An analysis of bell Canada's Technology

In this paper a dynamic model of production is estimated for Bell Canada. The dynamics arise from the costs of adjustment associated with capital expansion. Estimation results showed that there are significant adjustment costs. Thus, the hypothesis of long-run cost minimization is rejected. As Bell Canada increases its capital stock by $1, there are additional adjustment costs of $0.36. This result implies that Bell Canada minimizes the present value of production and adjustment costs which results in a short-run equilibrium position. Price, substitution and output elasticities are estimated. In the short-run the inputs are substitutes and the price effects are highly inelastic. Overshooting occurs with respect to labour and material demands in the short-run since the demand for capital responds very little to output expansion. Returns to scale are also estimated in this cost of adjustment model. Bell Canada exhibits increasing returns to scale initially and then decreasing returns such that on average there are constant returns to scale with a scale elasticity of 1.08.     

Active ageing beyond the labour market: evidence on the role of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards at work

‘Active Ageing’ strategies aim to foster the participation of seniors in the society. Although economic literature has extensively studied the incentives for seniors to increase their labour supply, little is known about the motivations for older people to complement labour with other forms of social participation. This article provides empirical evidence of the role of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards received at work in the supply of formal and informal productive activities of 50- to 65-year-old workers. The results show that workers with higher levels of intrinsic rewards received at work, such as skill development opportunities and decision latitude, are more likely to participate in social activities outside the labour market. Extrinsic rewards on the other hand, like advancement perspectives, job security and pay, appear independent from both formal and informal social participation.     

On the role of unobserved preference heterogeneity in discrete choice models of labour supply

The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of unobserved preference heterogeneity in empirical applications of discrete choice models of labour supply. Typically, unobserved heterogeneity is estimated either with continuous or discrete mixture models. However, in order to avoid estimation difficulties, most of the empirical analysis assumes a relatively constrained mixture, standard examples being models where only few coefficients are allowed to vary with independent normal distributions or with discrete distributions with few mass points. We compare labour supply elasticities obtained with these typical specifications of unobserved heterogeneity with those from a more general model that we are able to estimate through an EM algorithm for the nonparametric estimation of mixed models. Results show that labour supply elasticities change significantly with respect to a basic model without unobserved heterogeneity only when the joint distribution of the varying tastes is left completely unspecified.     

Informal work networks

Abstract We present a model of time allocation between formal and informal labour supply, where workers learn of informal job opportunities from their peers. In addition to formal income taxation and enforcement, individuals’ labour supply decisions depend on the number of their peers with informal jobs and the strength of social ties. Workers allocate more time to informal activities when tax enforcement is lax and job information transmission is good. More connected social networks (e.g., wheel, complete) feature lower average income but higher average utility than poorly connected social networks (e.g., star, empty). Average income may be non‐monotonic in tax enforcement.     

Regulation and the cost of childcare

Female labour market choices depend on the availability, affordability and quality of childcare. In this article, we evaluate different regulatory measures and their effect on both the quality and the cost of childcare. First, we analyse data on regulations and costs to estimate the effect of regulatory measures on the cost of childcare. Next, we summarize the existing literature on the effect of regulation on childcare quality. We find that regulation intended to improve quality often focuses on easily observable measures of the care environment that do not necessarily affect the quality of care but that do increase the cost. Thus, we find that the regulatory environment could be improved by eliminating costly measures that do not affect quality of care.     

Joint Allocation of Leisure and Consumption Commodities: A Japanese Extended Consumer Demand System 1979—90

In this study we estimate the parameters of a household expenditure function which includes joint choice of leisure and consumption commodities in scope without a separability assumption. We have used Japanese prices, wage rate, labour supply, and expenditure data on ten commodity groups, collected from 47 cities over 12 years. This data set has the advantage that separate observations are available for each data point for all the variables. We employed the AI demand system, for estimation. Controlling for time-specific effects, the result implied a definite rejection of the weak separability of labour supply and commodity choice, and non-rejection of the homogeneity and symmetry restrictions on the demand system. All the own-price elasticities are significantly negative, and both substitutes and complements are observed across commodity groups. As for the negativity, all but one of the eigenvalues of the substitution matrix are negative. The result as a whole showed consistency with demand theory. The estimated compensated labour supply elasticity is 0.39, which is in reasonable agreement with the previous studies.     

Household sectoral choice and effective demand for rural credit in India

An analysis of the ICRISAT data from three Indian villages raises concern about the extent of rationing mechanism inhibiting the spread of formal credit in rural India where a significant proportion of households do not have any outstanding loan or borrow from the informal sector only. A limited-dependent econometric analysis of the factors jointly determining household sectoral choice and effective demand for informal loan conditional on whether a formal loan is available suggests that compared to formal loan easy and adequate access and prompt recovery are significant determinants of the popularity and viability of informal rural credit among sample households; also some households substitute labour income to ease the extent of credit. Thus, rationing of the formal credit is not the only factor inhibiting the spread of formal credit in the study villages.     

Estimating labour supply disequilibrium with fixed-effects random-coefficients regression

Long-term contracting, adjustment costs, or efficiency wages can make a worker supply fewer (more) hours than desired at the current economic opportunity set. A regression model with cross-correlated random coefficients is used to obtain new theoretically based measures of the direction and relative intensity of labour supply disequilibrium. Among prime-aged male hourly paid workers in the United States during 1978–82, evidence of widespread underemployment is found. Among primeaged male salaried workers, some overemployment appears. Regressions incorporating person-specific fixed effects are consistent with a life-cycle labour supply model for salaried workers and suggest a need for fresh ways to include short-run labour demand forces in micro labour supply models of hourly paid workers.     

‘Marginal employment’ and the demand for heterogeneous labour – elasticity estimates from a multi-factor labour demand model for Germany

We develop a structural multi-factor labour demand model which distinguishes between eight labour categories including marginal employment, i.e. low-paying jobs with only a few working hours and partially exempted from employee's social security contributions. Using a new panel data set for Germany, the model is estimated both for the number of workers and total working hours. For unskilled and skilled workers in full-time employment, we find labour demand elasticities similar to previous estimates. Our new estimates of own-wage elasticities for marginal employment range between??0.13 (number of male workers in West Germany) to??1 (working hours for women).     

The role of husband's and wife's economic activity status in the demand for children

Data from Hong Kong were used to examine how the demand for children is affected by the economic returns to different types of market activities. The specific data used was a 1% sample of the 1976 "Hong Kong By-Census of Population." Only women under 50 who were currently married and living with their husbands were included. The households were restricted to land-based and non-farm families with economically active husbands. There were a total of 4128 families in the sample; in 3768 families the wife had experienced at least 1 birth. A simple 1-period model of household production and fertility demand is outlined. Emphasis was on 2 aspects of the demand for children in households who choose to work in the informal sector: children are more readily employed in a family business; and wife's work in a family business or in a wage employment at home is more compatible with childcare activities. Both effects imply that holding constant other characteristics, a higher desired stock of children will be demanded. As expected, an increase in wife's predicted log earnings in home work had a negative effect on the demand for children. The effect was almost always significant. An increase in wife's productivity in the family business, as proxied by her predicted log earnings in the family business, increased the demand for children significantly. This usually is interpreted to be a result of entering a market activity which is compatible with childcare. Another possible explanation is that the price of children is lowered because if children work in the family business then their productive contributions subsidize their parents' consumption. Yet, without direct measures or proxies for these effects, it is not possible to distinguish between them. An increase in husband's predicted log earnings in wage employment had a significant negative effect on demand for children. This can be interpreted in 2 ways: if an interior solution exists for husband's allocation of time, then a negative effect implies either that children are inferior (or are observed to be so) or husband's predicted log earnings in wage employment increases the probability of specializing in it. Thus, the role of children in the family business vanishes, and the desired number of children is reduced. Both husband's and wife's schooling reduced significantly the demand for children. In general, estimates of coefficients from families with at least 1 child were smaller in absolute magnitude and less significant statistically.