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.     

Wage Differentials and Labour Supply of Married Women in Japan: Part-time and Informal Sector Work Opportunities

This paper studies the pattern of labour supply of Japanese married women. The study develops and tests a discrete work choice model with a differing level of fixed cost of work and equalizing wage differential s. This accounts for differences in work characteristics of the regular status and part-time status work at firms, the family and self-employment. A 20 to 30 per cent hourly wage differential was obser ved between work categories with control on skills, region and other variables. Different effects are studied of the numbe r and ages of children, a grandmother's presence and the wife's educational attainments on the category of work selected.
The data employed come from The Occupational History and Mobility Survey of Women 1983 (OHMS), conducted by the National Institute for Vocational and Occupational Research, and allow detailed wage regression and consideration of different work categories which were not feasible in previous works. Empirical regulari ties of the Japanese labour market, such as the absence of growth in labour participation for mothers with small children, are better explained when work categories are dealt with separately.     

Work and Wage Dynamics around Childbirth

In this paper, we investigate how the wage processes of women who are well established in the labour market are affected by having children. We estimate a flexible fixed‐effects wage regression model extended by post‐childbirth fixed effects. We use register data on West Germany, and we exploit the expansionary family policy during the late 1980s and 1990s for identification. On their return to work after childbirth, the wages of mothers drop by 3–5.7 per cent per year of leave. We find negative selection back to full‐time work after childbirth. We discuss the policy implications regarding statistical discrimination and the results concerning the family gap.     

The Use and Cost of Child Care in Australia

The use and cost of child care have become important policy issues with rising labour force participation for women responsible for young children. In this article it is shown that for children aged less than 2 informal care is much more important than formal care. For children aged 3 to 5 by far the most important, and cheapest, form of formal care is preschool. The category of formal care which has expanded most rapidly is child care centre places. However the recent expansion of female employment has been effected with no rise in the share of formal care in the total. Publicly supplied child care centre places are over 40 per cent more expensive to produce than private ones. It is argued that for those who do not receive a fee relief subsidy public care is more expensive than private care. The inference is drawn that people are willing to pay more for public than private care because public care is of higher quality. However those buying this higher quality care pay (at most) only 80 per cent of the cost of producing the care. The shortage of care in the public sector is not solved by private sector expansion because users of care are not willing to pay the price of producing high quality care.     

Unequal opportunities and public policy: The impact of parental disability benefits on child postsecondary attendance

This paper uses Canada's National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth to examine whether greater cash transfers available to parents with disabilities when their child was aged 5 to 15 increase the chances that the child will attend postsecondary education (PSE) as a young adult. We exploit differences across provinces and over time in the generosity of provincial disability benefits programs in Canada and find that higher disability benefits when the child was aged 5 to 15 years increase the probability that he or she will have attended or be attending PSE by age 19 to 25. The estimated effect size increases with the severity of the parental disability and the number of disabled parents. Because lower disability benefits significantly worsen performance of public school aged children on standardized math tests and elevate anxiety symptoms, one plausible pathway from disability benefit levels to PSE attendance may be through the cognitive and non‐cognitive skills children acquire by the age of 15. We conclude that the level of disability transfers available early in a child's life mitigates the impact of having a parent with a disability as a source of inequality of opportunity and of unequal probability of PSE participation.     

Does the Gap in Family‐friendly Policies Drive the Family Gap?*

Segregation of the labour market into a family‐friendly and a non‐family‐friendly sector implies that women self‐select into sectors depending on institutional constraints, preferences for family‐friendly working conditions and expected wage differences. We take this sector dimension into account and find a severe penalty after birth‐related leave in the non‐family‐friendly sector, so that women who would be affected by this penalty self‐select into the family‐friendly sector. The penalty is a combination of a large human‐capital depreciation effect, a child penalty and no recovery.     

An Economic Examination of the Post-Transition Fertility Decline in Russia

This article uses longitudinal household data to examine the decline in the Total Fertility Rate in Russia from 2.0 in 1989 to 1.3 in 2001. Using individual and community-level panel data spanning the 1994–2001 era, the decline in household income can account for about a 28% decline in yearly birth propensities amongst married couples. The relationship between educational attainment and fertility appears to have changed markedly in the post-Soviet era. More educated individuals now have greater propensities to bear children than their vocationally educated counterparts within marriage. Female labour force participation is not strongly associated with fertility decisions of married women in the post-Soviet era, and local provisions for children also do not have important effects. These results suggest that improving real family incomes will be more important in raising fertility rates than improving child benefits levels or increasing community childcare provisions.     

A DYNAMIC DECISION MODEL OF MARRIAGE,CHILDBEARING, AND LABOUR FORCE PARTICIPATION OF WOMEN IN JAPAN*

This paper empirically examines marriage, child bearing and labour force participation behaviour of fertile‐aged women in Japan, applying an estimable dynamic model of dis‐crete choice. Using microdata from the 1994–1999 Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers, the structural estimation result suggests that, overall, women are worse off with marriage and part‐time work without financial benefits. Women are better off having two or more children, but considerably worse off because of the burden of raising infants. In addition, probabilities of finding full‐time work after career interruption are estimated at about 18% for university educated women and 12–13% for less educated women.     

INTER‐TEMPORAL LABOUR FORCE PARTICIPATION AMONG MARRIED WOMEN IN JAPAN*

This paper investigates the components that affect inter‐temporal labour force participation among married women in Japan. We estimate linear probability models and simple, dynamic probit models with a variety of specifications. We find that serially correlated transitory errors have a significant effect on the participation behaviour of married women, while the first‐order lagged dependent variable has no significant effect. The result that serially correlated transitory errors influence married women's inter‐temporal labour force participation suggests that exogenous rather than endogenous causes have a significant effect on long‐term economic disparity among married women.     

How Women Are Faring in the Australian Labour Market

The Economic and Social Outlook Conference that was held in 2011 carried a separate session on the role of women in the Australian labour market for the first time. Women now make up some 45 per cent of the workforce—in the late 1970s, the proportion stood at one‐third. While women play an increasingly more important role in the labour market, the gap between male and female earnings has shown stubborn persistence, at around 15 per cent. Various explanations include productivity‐related characteristics and the changing age profile of the female workforce. For low‐paid workers, these explanations are convincing; for high‐paid workers, both in the public and private sector, the pay gap remains unexplained.     

Wives' motives and fertility

This analysis assumes that childhood learning has a strong impact on the measured motivations of adults. This study uses responses among 354 White married women in 1976 to the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). Wives' responses to four pictures are expected to mirror the following four typologies: affiliation imagery (AFF), power imagery (POW), power and affiliation imagery (POWAF), and without references to affiliation or power (CULT). CULT is presumed to reflect the motivation of the wife in the average family. Expected relationships between these root motives and fertility are identified. Findings show that families with persuasive affiliative wives allocated more time to child care and had lower family incomes than other families. AFF wives worked fewer hours per week than other wives and allocated more time per child than other wives. Husbands helped them with child care sometimes or often. Households sacrificed material possessions for children. Findings did not support the inference that low income was due to husband's low earnings but did support the inference that low income might be due to the wives' short work week. The logistic model that controls for hours worked per week and number of years at the present job shows that wives were happiest in their marriage, if wives had high power motivation. Family income was a significant determinant of achievement satisfaction and not of affiliation satisfaction. Nerlove's hypothesis that there is an inverse relationship between wife's level of education and her taste for children was rejected. The wife's motivation toward her husband was an important factor that impacted on her preference for children and for work and her perceived level of utility. Wives who asserted themselves in socially acceptable situations (high in power motivations) were most likely to report having a happier than average marriage. Both affiliative and persuasive affiliative wives took satisfaction in their children's happiness and achievements.     

Attitude to child-bearing by single Nigerian women

The author examines attitudes toward childbearing by unmarried Nigerian women using data from interviews with a sample of 212 male and female residents of Ibadan, Nigeria, chosen in order to examine the views of educated Nigerians. The respondents were, for the most part, Yorubas, married, and aged 20-40. "In general, the respondents supported the suggestion that women who are unmarried should try and have children of their own, but they are opposed to the suggestion that such women should have as many children as possible, either from the same man or from different men of their choice." The author suggests that "one significant implication of the survey is that the general fertility rate (that is the annual number of births per 1,000 women of reproductive age) may be very high in developing areas not only because married women produce children, but also because women of childbearing ages who are single [are] also encouraged to have children of their own."     

Determinants of Female Employment*

A survey of 1030 women aged between 20 and 60 years was made in 1977 in Eastwood, a middle-class suburb of Sydney. It was used to measure the size of the female labour force and the level of unemployment in the area. In addition, logit analysis was applied to the data to identify the personal and family characteristics that determined work behaviour. It was found that active workforce participation and hours of work could be explained adequately by only four variables—age of respondent, marital status, education level and (where relevant) age of youngest child.     

Analysis of the 1980 Sydney Survey of Work Patterns of Married Women: Further Results*

Using cross-section data from the 1980 Sydney survey of the work patterns of married women, this paper contributes to the very scarce Australian stock of disaggregate econometric studies of the labour market activities of married women. Labour force participation, hours of work and wage functions (reservation wage as well as market wage) are estimated in a second-generation static labour supply framework. Unique features of the study include the availability of direct data on previous market experience, a formulation of the impact of children on the participation decision which permits testing for the presence of economies of scale in child-minding activities, estimation of the reservation wage function, and a data base which permits a clear distinction between earnings and other forms of income.     

No country for young men: International migration and left‐behind children in Tajikistan

This paper investigates the effects of international migration on the schooling and labour outcomes of left‐behind children in rural Tajikistan. Using three‐wave panel survey data, I rely on an instrumental variable strategy to address the non‐random selection into migration. I identify important and gender‐differenced schooling and labour supply responses. My findings suggest that boys living in migrant households are less likely to lag behind at school or work. At the intensive margin, they also report fewer hours of work per week. On the other hand, left‐behind teenage females undertake a higher number of domestic chores. They appear to marry earlier as well. The migration impact on boys appears to be driven by remittances and the improved financial situation of households. The absence of any positive influence on the education of left‐behind girls is likely to be explained by Tajikistan's cultural norms and institutions.     

Factors influencing ‘missing girls’ in South Korea

Despite the massive attention drawn to ‘missing girls,’ there has been no study that specifically focuses on the association between childlessness and the daughter deficit. Using a bivariate probit selection model, this article analysed the data for 6475 married women aged 15–49 years collected from the 2003 Korea National Fertility and Family Health Survey. The results showed that a couple's decision to have a child exerted a significant influence on its daughter deficit. This study also found that the effect of a woman's education on daughter deficit did not correspond to that of her husband's level of education. Additionally, a prediction was made that if a one child family norm were prevailing in South Korea, the probability of a couple's having a daughter deficit would increase by as much as 63.9%.     

TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS AND POPULATION GROWTH: DO WE HAVE TOO FEW CHILDREN?

Do we have too few children? We intend to address this question. In developed countries, the fertility rate has declined since WWII. This may cause a slowdown in the growth of GDP in developed countries. However, important factors for the well‐being of individuals are per capita variables, like per capita growth and per capita consumption. In turn, the rate of technological progress determines the growth rates of per capita variables. If the population size is increasing, the labour inputs for R&D activity increase, and thus speed up technological progress. As individuals do not take account of this positive effect when deciding on the number of their own children, the number of children may become smaller than the socially optimal number of children. However, an increase in the number of children reduces the assets any one child owns: that is, there is a capital dilution effect. This works in the opposite direction. We examine this issue using an endogenous growth model where the head of a dynastic family decides the number of children.     

Marriage,cohabitation and women's response to changes in the male wage structure

Using microdata and grouped data that cover the period 1996 to 2006, we assess the extent to which cohabiting women adjust their labour supply to a lesser extent, if any, than married women in response to changes in male wages. Both microdata regressions and grouping estimators unambiguously indicate that cohabiting women respond less to variation in male wages than married women. However, the magnitude of the difference is not sizeable. We also assess the magnitude of married men's and cohabiting men's own wage elasticities and find that they do not differ much. Combined with the fact that male earnings account for roughly two-thirds of family earnings, these two findings explain why the impact of changes in male wages on family earnings is very similar for married couples and cohabiting couples: in both cases, a 10% decline in male wages appears to induce roughly a 6% drop in family earnings.     

The effect of the timing and spacing of births on the level of labor market involvement of married women

We analyze the effect of the timing and spacing of births on the labor supply of married women in a framework that accounts for the endogeneity of the labor market and fertility decisions, for the heterogeneity of the effects of children on labor supply and their correlation with the fertility decisions, and for the correlation of sequential labor market decisions. Delaying the first birth leads to higher pre-natal levels of labor market involvement and reduces the negative effect of the first child on labor supply. The effect of the second child increases with the spacing of the two births as women, returning to work after the first birth, finance child care time increasingly through reductions in market time. Individual heterogeneity is considerable; women with lower propensity for children have the first birth later in life and space subsequent births more closely together, work more before the birth of the first child, but face larger effects of children on their labor supply.     

Married women's labor supply and economic development: Evidence from Sri Lankan household data

Women's labor supply in Sri Lanka has increased steadily since the early 1990s following economic reforms, but remains well below the level predicted by national income, a feature shared by a number of Asian and Latin American countries that have undergone similar reforms and economic growth. To understand the microeconomic determinants of women's work in Sri Lanka's growing economy, this paper estimates a binary‐choice model of married women's labor supply using household survey data spanning a 23‐year period. Decomposition and cohort analysis reveal that women have been drawn into the workforce through falling fertility rates, rising tertiary education, and declining income effects among younger generations, but other factors have undermined this positive trend. Educational attainment reduces married women's labor supply except at the tertiary level, consistent with social stigmas associated with married women in non‐white‐collar employment. The strict sectoral segregation of married women by education level supports this hypothesis. In addition, growth has been concentrated in low‐skilled sectors with self‐employment more prevalent, reducing employment prospects of educated women and prompting their labor force withdrawal. This suggests it is the structure of economic development, rather than speed, that matters for women's labor force activity.