AFDC and births to unwed women

Most studies by economists have been inconclusive when seeking a consistent relationship between income-support programs [like aid to families with dependent children (AFDC)] and births to unwed women (or, as the literature traditionally terms it, illegitimacy). But a recent study [Southern Econ. J. 62 (1995) 44] reports a large, positive and statistically significant relationship when data are weighted to reflect differences in propensities toward illegitimacy. We find that the 1995 study appears to rely upon erroneous data and irregular econometric technique. When these are remedied, the major results are reversed. We then suggest that a switching regimes methodology, with parameters influenced by other variables, is more appropriate to the issue. Our empirical results confirm the literature's consensus that AFDC and illegitimacy do not appear to be strongly related.     

HOW DOES FEMALE EDUCATION AFFECT FERTLITY? A STRUCTURAL MODEL FOR THE CÔTE D'IVOIRE†

This research study provides some insights into methodological issues in modeling fertility and its proximate determinants. The aim is to examine the links between female schooling and fertility in the Ivory Coast. The article first presents a brief literature review on the effect of education on fertility, describes the data and choice of econometric models, and indicates in a reduced form model the estimates of the impact of education and other socioeconomic factors on age at cohabitation and duration of breast feeding. Data are obtained from the 1986 Cote d'Ivoire Living Standards Survey among women aged 16 years or older. A probit model is used to estimate the probability of a woman having given birth at least once. The Kaplan-Meier hazard rate (Meyer's method) is used to explain women's age at cohabitation as a function of her education, personal characteristics, and local factors such as wage rates an social service infrastructure. Duration of breast feeding is explained by household characteristics as well as cohabitation explanatory variables among a subsample of women with at least one birth. Findings from the age at cohabitation models indicate that results varied with choice of the hazard models. Controls for unobserved heterogeneity were important for estimating the effects of secondary education. Econometric techniques that captured the heaping in duration of breast feeding data did not improve the fit. Both breast feeding and education were endogenous to fertility. This means that women with more children tended to marry later and breast feed longer. Findings indicate that primary schooling had a weak impact on fertility and proximate determinants. Secondary schooling had a strong impact. Women with secondary schooling cohabited 4 years later and breast fed 8 months less than non-schooled women.     

The Revenue Potential of Site Value Tax: Extension and Update of General Equilibrium Model With Recent Empirical Estimates of Several Key Parameters

A bstract . Although appealing on the consideration of efficiency, the site ( land ) value tax has been dismissed by some economists as an unviable alternative to the local real estate tax on the ground that it cannot generate sufficient revenue. From earlier work based on a general equilibrium model, however, a switch from a real estate to an equal yield site value tax could result in an increase in equilibrium land prices (and hence the site value tax base). In particular, equilibrium land prices will rise with a site value relative to a real estate tax if: (L+K/L) > e_x. (f_L+ f_k)/f_k. s_x+ e_x. f_L Critical to that theoretical result are the magnitudes of several parameters including the percent land constitutes of total real estate value , (L + K/L), the elasticity of substitution, s_x, the elasticity of demand for real estate e_x, and the output elasticities, f_k and f_L. Based on recent empirical estimates of those parameters, the above stated condition holds.     

Promoting employment of disabled women in Spain; Evaluating a policy

Even though the Disability System in Spain is designed to allow partially disabled individuals to combine the receipt of the benefits with a job, their employment rates have remained very low since 1996. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the results of an employment promotion policy introduced in Spain in 2004 which increased the deductions to the Social Security contributions paid by employers that hired disabled women. We apply difference-in-difference models and estimate a recursive bivariate probit model to evaluate the existence of shifts in employment trends in the women relative to the men sample conditioning on the existence of preexisting trends. We find that the impact of the policy is significant and we estimate an average elasticity of employment of 0.14 for partially and of 0.08 for totally disabled women relative to the deductions in the employer Social Security contributions. Finally, when we extrapolate the results beyond our sample, we estimate that 7100 disabled women were able to find a job in Spain due to the policy with an associated cost of 10,997.900 euro for the government.     

NATIONAL AND REGIONAL WAGE CURVES IN JAPAN 1981–2001

There is evidence in many countries of an inverse relationship between the real wages paid to workers and the unemployment rate in their local labor market, a so-called wage curve. However, the evidence to date for Japan has been rather limited. In this paper, we estimate wage curves for Japan using pooled cross-section time-series data from 1981 until 2001. The presence of a wage curve is confirmed. The wage curve has become slightly more elastic after the bubble economy of the 1980s than it was in the pre-bubble and mid-bubble period. The unemployment elasticity of pay is greater for males than for females. We also estimate regional wage curves using time-series data. The male wage curve elasticity is larger in the northern regions of Hokkaido and Tohoku and the western region of Shikoku, while it is smaller in the central regions of Hokuriku, Tokai and Kinki.     

Applicability of a spatial computable general equilibrium model to assess the short-term economic impact of natural disasters

Computable general equilibrium (CGE) models have been widely used to assess the economic impact of natural disasters, but the models have not been fully validated by applying them to real disasters. This study focuses on validating a model for use in a short-run case in which the functional recovery of infrastructure and businesses occurred on a time scale of a few months. A special attempt is made to determine the parameter values of elasticity of substitutions, which play an important role in the effect on supply chains. In this study, a spatial CGE model, in which Japan is divided into nine regions, is constructed and applied to the case of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. Through this application, the best estimates of the elasticity parameters generated relatively consistent estimates of production change compared with the observed change, both in severely affected regions and in other regions.     

Contract duration and indexation in a period of real and nominal uncertainty

A large sample of Canadian union contracts is used to study the determinants of key provisions such as their duration and elasticity of indexation. Over the last two decades the former has doubled and the latter has halved in size. Techniques, which account for the interaction between duration and indexation and a latent elasticity of indexation are used. The period studied (1976–2000) includes high and low inflation and substantial fluctuations in real and nominal uncertainty, allowing these variables to influence contracts. Results suggest that these variables account for the secular and cyclical changes in contract provisions.     

Intergenerational Transmission of Fertility Patterns*

Recent studies by economists have focused on cultural transmission from the origin country rather than the origin family. Our paper extends this research by investigating how family‐specific‘cultural transmission’ can affect fertility rates. Following Machado and Santos Silva [Journal of the American Statistical Association (2005) Vol. 100, p. 1226] and Miranda [Journal of Population Economics (2008) Vol. 21, p. 67], we estimate count data quantile regression models using the British Household Panel Survey. We find that a woman's origin‐family size is positively associated with completed fertility in her destination family. A woman's country of birth also matters for her fertility. For a sub‐sample of continuously partnered men and women, both partners’ origin‐family sizes significantly affect destination‐family fertility.     

The responsiveness of self-employment income to tax rate changes

This paper estimates the extent to which self-employment income responds to changes in the net-of-tax share using a panel of tax returns that spans 1987–1996. The results suggest that the elasticity of reported self-employment income to the net-of-tax share is approximately .9, implying a real elasticity (net of any reporting response) of around .4. Estimated elasticities tend to be larger for higher income taxpayers, married males, and females. In addition, the elasticity of self-employment income is considerably larger than the elasticity wage and salary income estimated using the same methodology.     

A TIME SERIES ANALYSIS OF ANNUAL PASSENGER DEMAND FOR THE STATE RAILWAY OF THAILAND

This paper presents a time series regression model to estimate annual passenger demand for the State Railway of Thailand (SRT). The model was developed for a time period of 15 years (1974–1988), incorporating such variables as the country's gross domestic product (GDP), SRT passenger fares, competing intercity bus fares, and a dummy variable of the Fifth National Five Year Plan advocating a railway-favored modal shift policy. This simple but useful model analysis estimated the demand elasticities as: 0.907 with respect to real GDP; -0.970 with respect to real SRT fare; and 0.808 with respect to real bus fare. Remarkable manufacturing-oriented economic development of Thailand in recent years played an important part in recent SRT demand increases. As the relatively high own and cross fare elasticity estimates imply, the SRT is concerned about demand loss to competing intercity bus services, and has thus been keeping fare levels low. The model analysis also estimated a demand gain of 12.3% due to the modal shift policy during the Fifth Plan period, suggesting effectiveness of the policy.     

Can child care policy encourage employment and fertility?: Evidence from a structural model

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

A time series analysis of real wages,consumption and asset returns

This paper re-examines whether the time series properties of aggregate consumption, real wages, and asset returns can be explained by a neoclassical model. Previous empirical rejections of the model have suggested that the optimal labour contract model might be appropriate for understanding the time series properties of the real wage rate and consumption. We show that an optimal contract model restricts the long-run relation of the real wage rate and consumption. We exploit this long-run restriction (cointegration restriction) for estimating and testing the model, using Ogaki and Park's (1989) cointegration approach. This long-run restriction involves a parameter that we call the long-run intertemporal elasticity of substitution (IES) for non-durable consumption but does not involve the IES for leisure. This allows us to estimate the long-run IES for non-durable consumption from a cointegrating regression. Tests for the null of cointegration do not reject our model. As a further analysis, our estimates of the long-run IES for non-durable consumption are used to estimate the discount factor and a coefficient of time-nonseparability using Hansen's (1982) Generalized Method of Moments. We form a specification test for our model à la Hausman (1978) from these two steps. This specification test does not reject our model. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Family planning in a life-cycle model with income risk

Several US states have recently restricted the access to abortions. We study fertility intentions and how family planning and abortions are used as mechanisms to control fertility among couples facing income risk. We formulate and estimate a life-cycle consumption-saving model with uninsurable income risk and imperfect contraceptive control that matches fertility behavior in the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) well. We use the estimated model to investigate how family planning and abortions are used to control fertility in our model. Our simulations suggest that income risk affects family planning and that abortion is used to control fertility due to the presence of income risk. This indicates that the availability of abortions might play a role as an insurance mechanism.     

Time costs,aspirations and the effect of economic growth on German fertility

Recent research has shown strong support for the model of reproductive behavior derived from the new home economics, and it is shown in this discussion that the evidence from the Federal Republic of Germany is consistent with the new home economics model. There is little support for Easterlin's relative economic hypothesis, but there is limited endorsement for model which adds the influence of experience based material aspirations to the new home economics model. Easterlin's relative income model is reviewed before directing attention to the new home economics model and an explanation of fertility movements in West Germany. The new home economics model focuses on the family division of labor between home activities and work outside the home. The marked decline in German fertility during the 1970s is mostly attributable to factors such as expanding women's earning capacities which increased the importance of 2 earner families, who have a different family division of labor and possibly preferences biased towards "quality" of children rather than numbers. Also, real wage growth lagged behind the growth in experience based aspirations, and this drop in relative income is more dramatic if it is presumed that material aspirations are based upon the family's income experienced by a young adult during his/her adolescence, rather than just the father's earnings. The mother's contribution to family income will contribute to her family's actual standard of living and the desired standard of living of her children. The labor force participation rates of married, middle-aged German women increased markedly during the 1st half of the 1950s, thus tending to enhance the increase in the standard of living desired by the young adults reaching marrying and childbearing ages in the mid-1960s. The analysis indicates that if there is not a substantial reduction in the proportion of young married women in the labor force, fertility will move countercyclically. In that there must be some floor to fertility, one should be cautious of using these parameter estimates considerably outside the 1950-1977 period. Nonetheless, the estimates indicate that economic growth will not bring a substantial rise in German fertility, and, outside the unlikely situation of sustained economic decline, fertility will remain low.     

基于局部调整模型的我国现阶段货币需求函数分析

借鉴成本最小化行为引发的局部调整模型,采用1999年一季度至2005第三季度数据,建立我国短期动态货币需求函数。回归结果显示,实际货币需求的收入弹性为0.166,利率弹性为-0.096,通货膨胀弹性为-0.645,基本符合一般市场经济特质。根据我国近期宏观调控目标进行短期动态预测,得出2005年四季度至2006年四季度名义货币供应量M1季度同比增长率平均为13.2%,表明在当前错综复杂的经济形势下,特别是外部冲击形成空前压力下,我国货币政策应保持谨慎紧缩倾向。     

Smoothed binary regression quantiles

This paper extends results regarding smoothed median binary regression to general smoothed binary quantile regression, discusses the interpretation of the resulting estimators under alternative assumptions, and shows how they may be used to obtain semiparametric estimates of counterfactual probabilities. The estimators are applied to a model of labour force participation of married women in the USA. We find that the elasticity with respect to non‐labour income is significantly negative only for women that belong to the middle of the conditional willingness‐to‐participate (WTP) distribution. In comparing the quantile models with parametric logit and semiparametric single‐index specifications, we find that the models agree closely for women around the centre of the WTP distribution, but there are considerable disagreements as we move towards the tails of the distribution. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Conception intervals and the substitution of fertility over time

This paper applies the waiting-time regression methods of Olsen and Wolpin (1983) to an analysis of fertility. A utility maximizing model is set up and used to provide some guidance for an empirical analysis. The data are from an experimental guaranteed job program, the Youth Incentive Entitlement Pilot Project, aimed at young women 16 to 20 years old, from poverty-level families, and not yet high school graduates. The waiting-time regression method of estimation permits the youth in question to be used as her own control revealing how eligibility for the jobs program changes the durations of periods between live-birth conceptions. 3890 women surveyed had 1 birth, 429 had 2, 112 had 3, 26 had 4, and 7 had 5. Without this person specific control described here, the most important factors affecting fertility are number of siblings (negative effect), labor market attachment by parents, especially the father, and the presence of the natural father. With the person specific control, the results predicted from economic theory do emerge: even adolescent and young women consider the economic consequences of fertility reflected in effects of fertility when wages are high in favor of fertility with lower wages. Post program effects (taking place after youths lose eligibility for the program) are a rather rapid making up for foregone fertility, reducing likelihood of net reductions of total fertility.     

A kink that makes you sick: The effect of sick pay on absence

We exploit a regression kink design to estimate the elasticity of the duration of sickness absence with respect to replacement rate. Elasticity is a central parameter in defining the optimal social insurance scheme compensating for lost earnings due to sickness. We use comprehensive administrative data and a kink in the policy rule near the median earnings. We find a statistically significant estimate of the elasticity of the order of one.     

Modeling and forecasting the time series of US fertility: age distribution,range, and ultimate level

This discussion of modeling focuses on the difficulties in longterm, time-series forecasting of US fertility. Four possibilities are suggested. One difficulty with the traditional approach of using high or low bounds on fertility and mortality is that forecast errors are perfectly correlated over time, which means there are no cancellation of errors over time. The shape of future fertility intervals first increases, then stabilizes, and then decreases instead of remaining stable. This occurs because the number of terms being averaged increases with horizontal length. Alho and Spencer attempted to reduce these errors in time-series. Other difficulties are the idiosyncratic behavior of age specific fertility over time, biological bounds for total fertility rates (TFR) of 16 and zero, the integration of knowledge about fertility behavior that narrows the bounds, the unlikelihood of some probability outcomes of stochastic models with a normally distributed error term, the small relative change in TFR between years, a US fertility cycle of about 40 years, unimportant extrapolation of past trends in child and infant mortality, and the unlikelihood of reversals in mortality and contraceptive use trends. Another problem is the unsuitability of longterm forecasts. New methods include a model which estimates a one parameter family of fertility schedules and then forecasts that single parameter. Another method is a logistic transformation to account for prior information on the bounds on fertility estimates; this method is similar to Bayesian methods for ARMA models developed by Monahan. Models include information on the ultimate level of fertility and assume that the equilibrium level is a stochastic process trending over time. The horizon forecast method is preferred unless the effects of the outliers are known. Estimates of fertility are presented for the equilibrium constrained and logistic transformed model. Forecasts of age specific fertility rates can be calculated from forecasts of the fertility index (a single time varying parameter). The model of fertility fits poorly at older ages but captures some of the wide swings in the historical pattern. Age variations are not accounted for very well. Longterm forecasts tell a great deal about the uncertainty of forecast errors. Estimates are too sensitive to model specification for accuracy and ignore the biological and socioeconomic context.     

Estimating school district expenditure functions under conditions of closed-end matching aid

Several studies have used ordinary least squares (OLS) to estimate school district expenditure functions for states with closed-end matching aid. The present paper demonstrates that the estimates of these studies may be inconsistent. A two-stage technique which guarantees consistent estimates is described and is used to estimate the price elasticity of expenditure for Pennsylvania school districts. The two-stage estimates indicate expenditure to be substantially more price-elastic than do the OLS estimates. The two-stage technique is appropriate for estimating any input demand or expenditure function when closed-end matching aid is involved.