IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/scandj/v118y2016i2p292-323.html

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

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Halla
  • Mario Lackner
  • Johann Scharler

Abstract

We study the effect of the size of the welfare state on family outcomes 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 the fertility, marriage, and divorce rates with a quantitatively stronger effect on the marriage rate. We conclude that the welfare state supports family formation. Nevertheless, we also find that the welfare state decouples marriage and fertility, and therefore, alters the organization of the family.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Halla & Mario Lackner & Johann Scharler, 2016. "Does the Welfare State Destroy the Family? Evidence from OECD Member Countries," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 118(2), pages 292-323, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:scandj:v:118:y:2016:i:2:p:292-323
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/sjoe.2016.118.issue-2
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Josefine Koebe & Jan Marcus, 2020. "The Impact of the Length of Schooling on the Timing of Family Formation," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1896, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    2. Eder, Christoph & Halla, Martin, 2020. "Economic origins of cultural norms: The case of animal husbandry and bastardy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    3. Koen Declercq & Muriel Dejemeppe & Mathilde Pourtois, 2026. "The Impact of Tightened Unemployment Benefit Eligibility on Young Adults’ Housing and Use of Private Safety Nets," LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES 2026005, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    4. Padilla-Romo, María & Peluffo, Cecilia & Viollaz, Mariana, 2025. "Parents’ effective time endowment and divorce: Evidence from extended school days," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 242(C).
    5. Verónica Escudero, 2018. "Are active labour market policies effective in activating and integrating low-skilled individuals? An international comparison," IZA Journal of Labor Policy, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-26, December.
    6. Marcus, Jan, 2022. "The Length of Schooling and the Timing of Family Formation," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 68(1), pages 1-45.
    7. Gordon Dahl & Katrine Loken, 2024. "Families, Public Policies, and the Labor Market," RFBerlin Discussion Paper Series 2423, ROCKWOOL Foundation Berlin (RFBerlin).
    8. Dahl, Gordon & Loken, Katrine V., 2024. "Families, public policies, and the labor market," Handbook of Labor Economics,, Elsevier.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • J18 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Public Policy
    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior
    • D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities
    • 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

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:scandj:v:118:y:2016:i:2:p:292-323. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1467-9442 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.