Cost of Raising Children, Child Poverty and Fertility Decisions

digital

Articolo

Rivista

RIVISTA INTERNAZIONALE DI SCIENZE SOCIALI

Fascicolo

RIVISTA INTERNAZIONALE DI SCIENZE SOCIALI - 2019 - 3

Titolo

Cost of Raising Children, Child Poverty and Fertility Decisions

Autori

Martina Menon, Federico Perali

Editore

Vita e Pensiero

Formato

Articolo |

Pdf

Online da

11-2019

Doi

10.26350/000518_000032

Issn

0035-676X (stampa) | 1827-7918 (digitale)

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Descrizione Commenti dei lettori

This study estimates the cost of raising children, which we also term the ‘‘price’’ of children, in the context of the collective theory of the household following Lazear and Michael’s (1988) method, not yet applied in the literature. Determination of the price of a child requires knowledge of the rule that governs how resources are allocated within the family, that is how much is spent for adults and how much for children. Though our estimate of that cost does not include an evaluation of parental time invested in one’s offspring, we investigate the relationship between the cost of raising children and procreative choices and, thanks to the possibility of deriving individual welfare functions for each household component, child poverty. On average, the price of a child amounts to 60 percent of the cost of an adult. Further, we find that the cost of raising a child depends on household income and decreases with family size. As expected, it significantly and negatively affects the likelihood of having children. Child poverty levels, as directly inferred from children’s welfare, are considerably higher than that derived from conventional measures.

keywords

Cost of children, Collective household model, Sharing rule, Child poverty, Intra-household inequality

Biografia degli autori

Martina Menon, Department of Economics, University of Verona, Italy. Email: martina.menon@univr.it
Federico Perali, Department of Economics, University of Verona, Italy, CHILD and Centro di Ateneo di Studi e Ricerche sulla Famiglia, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. Email: federico.perali@univr.it

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