Historically, in virtually all developed economies there seems to be clear evidence of an inverse relationship between female labor supply and fertility. However, particularly in the last decade or so, the relationship across countries has been positive: for example countries like Germany, Italy and Spain with the lowest fertility rates also have the lowest female participation rates. We accept the hypothesis that the reason for this lies in the combined effects of a country’s tax system and system of child support, and we have sought to clarify this theoretically, using an extended version of the Galor-Weil model. The results suggest that countries with individual rather than joint taxation, and which support families through improved availability of alternatives to domestic child care, rather than through direct child payments, are likely to have both higher female labor supply and higher fertility. These results are strengthened when we take account of the heterogeneity among households that undoubtedly exists.
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Paper provided by Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in its series IZA Discussion Papers with number
409.
Find related papers by JEL classification: H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household H53 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Francine D. Blau, 1996.
"The Gender Pay Gap,"
NBER Working Papers
5664, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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