Does the Welfare State Destroy the Family? Evidence from OECD Member Countries

We study the effect of the size of the welfare state on demographic trends in OECD member countries. Exploiting exogenous variation in public social spending, due to varying degrees of political fractionalization (i.e., the number of relevant parties involved in the legislative process), we show that an expansion in the welfare state increases fertility, marriage, and divorce rates with a quantitatively stronger effect on the marriage rate. We conclude that the welfare state supports family formation in the aggregate. Further, we find that the welfare state decouples marriage and fertility, and therefore alters the organization of the average family.     

The Income Splitting Method: Is it Good for Both Marriage Partners?

Abstract. This paper analyzes how deviating from individual taxation affects married couples. The focus is on time allocation, on investment in family‐specific human capital and on distribution of income within the family. Two insights are discussed in detail. First, the distribution of tax‐reduction gains due to the income splitting system depends on whether the family has been started or not. After marriage, joint taxation increases redistribution among family members. Second, although joint taxation reduces the tax burden of the family, it might harm the marriage partner that is more productive in household production provided that potential marriage partners foresee the effects of joint filing on the time allocation within the family.     

Why Divorce Laws Matter: Incentives for Noncontractible Marital Investments under Unilateral and Consent Divorce

The Coase Theorem suggests that married couples will divorceif and only if doing so increases their joint surplus, regardlessof the legal rules governing divorce. This does not mean, however,that divorce laws only affect the distribution of rents. Becausethe distribution of rents affects each spouse's incentives fornoncontractible investments, divorce laws can affect the jointwelfare of the couple. This article analyzes the effects ofthe consent divorce regime and the unilateral divorce regimeon incentives for selfish and cooperative marital investments.Using these results, the article demonstrates how endogenouschoice of marriage with noncontractible investments can explainsome recent empirical results concerning the effects of theshift from consent divorce to unilateral divorce. (JEL C78,D1, D23, J12, J18, K3, K36)     

How do altruistic parental transfers affect the welfare gains of marriage?

This paper analyses the effects of altruistic parental transfers on the welfare gains of marriage. To that end, it develops a sequential game which, in a first stage, determines the optimum level of the transfer between the altruistic donor (the parent) and the recipient (the daughter/son). In the second stage, the levels of consumption and provision of a family good are deduced by way of a Nash bargaining solution, with the threat point being represented by divorce. We find that the degree of altruism of the recipient has a null effect on the gains in welfare derived from the marriage by the recipient’s spouse, and a positive effect on those derived by the recipient. Additionally, the degree of altruism of the donor has a positive effect on the gains in welfare derived from the marriage by the recipient’s spouse, and an ambiguous effect on those derived by the recipient.     

Experience Rating versus Employment Protection Laws in a Model where Firms Monitor Workers*

While layoff costs in the U.S. are mostly due to experience‐rated unemployment insurance, layoff costs in European labour markets are primarily a consequence of employment protection laws. In this paper we compare the effects of experience rating and employment protection laws on employment and welfare in a model where unemployment arises due to efficiency wage setting and where labour turnover is inefficiently high. We show that a revenue‐neutral introduction of experience rating reduces labour turnover and increases employment and welfare. The introduction of employment protection laws may also reduce labour turnover but employment declines.     

残疾人婚姻家庭研究和发展的现状分析

对国内外有关残疾人婚姻家庭的法律法规、政策纲领及相关调查进行了梳理。残疾人结婚年龄普遍较晚,有配偶比例远远低于非残疾人,婚后离婚率和丧偶率高于非残疾人。有残疾人的家庭,大多存在收入较低、子女素质不高等诸多问题,侵犯残疾人婚姻家庭权益的事件时有发生。由于残疾人存在身体或功能障碍,家庭是其主要活动场所,家庭成员的照料和支持对他们尤为重要。有关残疾人的法律法规亟需完善与发展。     

A STACKELBERG MODEL OF CHILD SUPPORT AND WELFARE*

This article models the child support and welfare decisions of never‐married parents on welfare as a Stackelberg game. The mother chooses whether to exit welfare, report paternity, and to obtain a formal child support order. If a child support order is obtained, the father chooses whether to comply with the order. Simulation results from the structural parameters indicate that increasing the child support disregard increases paternal compliance slightly and affects maternal paternity reporting more significantly; effects are limited, however, by low paternal incomes. Results also indicate that high award amounts can decrease expected child support payments to women on welfare.     

论可撤销婚姻制度的完善

现行《婚姻法》及有关婚姻家庭方面的法律法规关于可撤销婚姻的规定仅仅是一种粗线条的“勾画”,我们应在可撤销婚姻的事由、行使和确认主体、限制、终审及法律后果等方面充实和完善可撤销婚姻制度。     

Welfare and the family size decision of low-income,two-parent families

This study determines the increase in family size given an increase in the per child welfare benefit for a family with children in the US. The family size decision was modeled as a discrete choice decision. Data were obtained from the 1980-91 March Current Population Surveys of the US Census Bureau on 13,516 low-income, nonmilitary, non-farm, two-parent families with at least one dependent child. Low income was any amount under twice the official poverty level. Parents were limited to ages 18-40 years. Alaska and Hawaii were excluded. The data sets for 1979-90 were pooled. The sample included 10% Blacks and 27% receiving some amount of welfare. Average ages were 28.9 years for mothers and 30.8 years for fathers. The average number of children was 2.43. Findings from the ordered probit model indicate that education had a negative impact on family size, and age and race had positive impacts. Wages did not have a significant effect. The state unemployment rate and the average state income had negative effects. Unearned income had a small but significant effect on family size. The marginal welfare benefit had a positive impact. Findings reinforce the wealth hypothesis, that wealthier societies have smaller family sizes. Family size declines with increases in wages and education, which reflect increases in opportunity costs for time. Family size increases with age, as rearing children is labor-intensive. Family size increases with unearned income and welfare benefits that make childbearing affordable. It is argued that poor people in developed societies behave more consistently like poor people in developing countries. A 100% increase in the per child welfare benefit resulted in a 2% increase in the number of children. The policy implication is that a considerable increase in welfare benefits will have only trivial behavioral impacts for the poor on family size decisions.     

The extension of social security coverage in developing countries

We study the dynamic general equilibrium effects of introducing a social pension program to elderly informal sector workers in developing countries who lack formal risk sharing mechanisms against income and longevity risks. To this end, we formulate a stochastic dynamic general equilibrium model that incorporates defining features of developing countries: a large informal sector, private transfers as an informal safety net, and a non-universal social security system. We find that the extension of retirement benefits to informal sector workers results in efficiency losses due to adverse effects on capital accumulation and the allocation of resources across formal and informal sectors. Despite these losses recipients of social pensions experience welfare gains as the positive insurance effects attributed to the extension of a social insurance system dominate. The welfare gains crucially depend on the skill distribution, private intra-family transfers and the specific tax used to finance the expansion.     

A Class of Bonferroni Inequality Indices

The purpose of this paper is to propose a family of inequality measures obtained from the Bonferroni curve as a distribution function. This family characterizes the income distribution, given the mean income, as well as other families considered in this paper. Although all of the families show a clear formal analogy and are mutually determined, their elements include very different value judgments for measuring inequality and social welfare. Normative aspects are analyzed by means of the preference distributions associated to the indexes. This allows us to compare the indexes, and in some cases, rank them according to their degree of inequality aversion, as well as studying their behavior regarding different principles of transfer.     

Marriage equality and interstate migration

This study examines the impact of state imposed, marriage equality laws on interstate migration prior to the 26 June 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling to legalize same-sex marriage in all states. Results of the estimation of a series of probit models suggest that all head of households are more likely to leave states without marriage equality. This estimated impact is significantly larger for household heads in same-sex relationships. When examining the migration choices separately by both sex and relationship type, this result remains significant for female heads of households in different-sex relationships and male heads of households in same-sex relationships. Simulations, using the results of the probit estimations, the analysis of regional trends, and recent rebellions against the Supreme Court ruling indicate that state level, marriage equality laws may be aggravating the imbalanced distribution of same- and different-sex couple households across the country.     

正规金融、非正规金融对家户福利的影响——来自中国农村的证据

金融抑制是发展中国家所面临的重要约束,其可能给家户福利和生产活动带来损失。金融约束不仅来自于正规金融,也来自于非正规金融。利用区域转换模型,本文从两个方面论证了正规金融与非正规金融对家户福利的不同作用。实证分析表明,正规金融约束的家户采用新的农业生产技术受到限制,非农经营的效应也更低,而社会资本在一定程度上对正规金融形成了替代,弥补了其部分功能。受到非正规金融约束的家户,社会资本的功能被弱化,但采用新的农业生产技术的作用以及参与农业生产合作组织的作用由于得到正规金融的支持而更强。正规金融与非正规金融大致存在一种替代关系,农村正规金融在满足生产发展尤其是非农业生产发展的需要方面发挥着重要作用,而基于社会资本的非正规金融主要对于缓冲收入冲击起着更重要的作用。     

Still waiting for Mister Right? Asymmetric information,abortion laws and the timing of marriage

Previous studies have suggested that more liberal abortion laws should lead to a decrease in marriage rates among young women as ‘shotgun weddings’ are no longer necessary. Empirical evidence from the United States lends support to that hypothesis. This article presents an alternative theory of abortion access and marriage based on the cost of search which suggests that more liberal abortion laws may actually promote young marriage. An empirical examination of marriage data from Eastern Europe shows that countries that liberalized their abortion laws saw an increase in marriage rates among nonteenage women.     

Education, segregation and marital sorting: theory and an application to the UK

This paper presents a model of the intergenerational transmission of education and marital sorting. Parents matter both because of their household income and because their human capital determines the distribution of a child's disutility from making an effort to become skilled. We show that an increase in segregation has potentially ambiguous effects on the proportion of individuals that become skilled in the steady state, and hence on marital sorting, the personal and household income distribution, and welfare. We calibrate the steady state of our model to UK statistics. We find that an increase in the correlation of spouses in their years of education will bring about a small increase in the proportion of skilled individuals when the relative supply of skilled individuals is variable at the family level and a decrease when this supply is fixed. Ex-ante utility (of an unborn individual) increases in the first case and decreases in the second. The welfare effect of increased sorting is negative for unskilled individuals and positive for skilled individuals. Increased segregation always leads to an increase in welfare inequality between skilled and unskilled individuals.     

农村大龄未婚男性家庭压力和应对策略研究——基于YC县访谈的发现

通过对中国中部农村的质性访谈, 利用扎根理论的三级登录方法, 探索性地利用家庭压力理论来解释大龄未婚男性家庭的压力以及可采取的应对策略。农村大龄未婚男性的失婚对家庭在经济上、家庭关系和成员的心理压力上都造成负面影响。研究为提高大龄未婚男性这一弱势群体及其家庭的生活福利, 缓解婚姻挤压和促进社会稳定提供理论依据。     

Lending policies of informal, formal and semiformal lenders

This paper compares lending policies of formal, informal and semiformal lenders with respect to household lending in Vietnam. The analysis suggests that the probability of using formal or semiformal credit increases if borrowers provide collateral, a guarantor and/or borrow for business‐related activities. The probability of using informal credit increases for female borrowers. It also appears that the probability of using formal credit increases in household welfare up to a certain threshold, but at a decreasing rate. In addition, the paper discerns the determinants of probability of default across lender types. Default risk of formal credit appears to be strongly affected by formal loan contract terms, e.g., loan interest rate and form of loan repayment, whereas default risk on informal loans is significantly related to the presence of propinquity and other internal characteristics of the borrowing household. Overall, the study raises several important implications for the screening, monitoring and enforcement instruments that may be employed by different types of lenders.     

Why Can’t I keep my Surname? The Fairness and Welfare of the Japanese Legal System

This study examines the welfare and fairness implications of Japan’s current policy on marriage surnames versus the proposed revised family law, which would enable husbands and wives to retain their premarital surnames. The study compares welfare in these two legal states, with a married couple’s welfare dependent on marriage-surname choice. It reviews the external preferences of anti-revisionists by the fairness criteria of impersonality or extended sympathy. Utilizing web-based survey data, the study conducts nonparametric rank analysis and parametric analysis of willingness to pay (WTP) for surname retention and legal support. Moreover, it conducts a structural equation analysis via a multiple indicators multiple causes (MIMIC) model, incorporating surname attachment and fairness as latent variables. The study shows that the revised law can increase welfare and that external disutility of the legal revision is invalid on fairness grounds.     

Does it pay firms to register for taxes? The impact of formality on firm profitability

This paper estimates the impact of registering for taxes on firm profits in Bolivia, the country with the highest levels of informality in Latin America. A new survey of micro and small firms enables us to control for a rich set of measures of owner ability and business motivations that can affect both profits and the decision to formalize. We identify the impact of tax registration on business profitability using the distance of a firm from the tax office where registration occurs, conditional on the distance to the city center, as an instrument for registration. Proximity to the tax office provides firms with more information about registration, but is argued to not directly affect profits. We find tax registration leads to significantly higher profits for the firms that the instrument affects. However, we also find some evidence of heterogeneous effects of tax formality on profits. Tax registration appears to increase profits for the mid-sized firms in our sample, but to lower profits for both the marginal smaller and larger firms, in contrast to the standard view that formality increases profits. We show that owners of large firms who have managed to stay informal are of higher entrepreneurial ability than formal firm owners, in contrast to the standard view (correct among smaller firms) that informal firm owners are low ability.     

大城市户籍改革的困境及未来政策走向——以上海为例

我国的户籍改革按照从小城镇、中等规模城市再到大城市的逻辑顺序展开。大城市户籍改革面临着人口承载能力限制、财政分权模式下的差别待遇、人才与人口可控性等一系列难题。消解大城市的户籍改革压力,涉及均衡区域资源配置、是否保留户籍的工具性,以及筛选机制和户籍门槛等核心问题。大城市户籍政策调整的关键仍然是寻求政策供需的均衡点,未来的政策走向是渐进式改革与福利供给"普惠制"的实现。