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The Cost of Children within Marriage: Intra-household Allocations of Time and Consumption

Author

Listed:
  • Laurens Cherchye
  • Bram De Rock
  • Khushboo Surana

Abstract

We use a structural revealed preference (RP) approach to study how fertility isassociated with intra-household allocations and individual welfare within married couples.Building on a collective consumption framework, we jointly model material consumptionand time use under heterogeneous preferences and Pareto-efficient household decisions,using marital stability to identify resource sharing from cross-sectional data. Applyingthe method to the 2023 wave of the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), wefind substantial gender inequality in intra-household allocations, with men consistentlyreceiving more resources. These disparities widen sharply with fertility. Householdswith children exhibit lower material and time welfare for both spouses, but the burdenfalls disproportionately on mothers. Material resources shift moderately, whereas thetime costs of children fall overwhelmingly on women: mothers experience large declinesin leisure and increases in home production time, leading to sharply higher time-povertyrisks and a clear worsening of the underlying welfare distribution. These patterns areespecially pronounced among the highly educated and document a dimension of thecost of children that household-level measures miss

Suggested Citation

  • Laurens Cherchye & Bram De Rock & Khushboo Surana, 2026. "The Cost of Children within Marriage: Intra-household Allocations of Time and Consumption," Working Papers ECARES 2026-15, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    • Handle: RePEc:eca:wpaper:2013/407342
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • C14 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods: General
    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure

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