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Are Children Decision-Makers Within the Household?

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Author Info
Anyck Dauphin
Abdel-Rahmen El Lahga
Bernard Fortin
Guy Lacroix

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Abstract

Children are seldom accounted for in household behavioural models. They are usually assumed to have neither the capacity nor the power to influence the household decision process. The literature on collective models has so far incorporated children through the "caring preferences" of their parents or has treated them as household public goods [Bourguignon (1999); Blundell et al. (2005)]. This paper seeks to determine whether children of a certain age decision-makers. We focus on the decision-making process within households composed of two adults and one child of at least 16 years of age. We first summarize the main restrictions that have been proposed to test the collective model in the context of multiple decision-makers [Chiappori and Ekeland (2006)]. We also show how a minimal number of decision-makers can be inferred from parametric constraints. Second, we apply these tests on data drawn from a series of U.K. Family Expenditure Surveys. Our results show clear evidence that it may be incorrect to assume that daughters and children aged between 16 and 21 are not full members influencing the household decision-making process.

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Paper provided by CIRPEE in its series Cahiers de recherche with number 0829.

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Date of creation: 2008
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Handle: RePEc:lvl:lacicr:0829

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Related research
Keywords: Intra-household allocation; collective household models; children; demand analysis; Pareto efficiency; rank tests;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
D79 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Other
J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth

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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.:
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(explanations, 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.)

  1. Alistair Munro, 2009. "Introduction to the Special Issue: Things We Do and Don’t Understand About the Household and the Environment," Environmental & Resource Economics, European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 43(1), pages 1-10, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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