IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ubc/clssrn/clsrn_admin-2013-43.html

The effect of universal child benefits on labour supply

Author

Listed:
  • Schirle, Tammy

Abstract

I study the effect of a universal child-related income transfer on the labour supply of married individuals. Using a difference-in-differences estimator, I find the Canadian Universal Child Care Benefit has significant negative income effects. The likelihood of lower-educated mothers to participate in the labour force is reduced 3.3 percentage points when receiving the benefit. Median hours worked per week among lower-educated mothers is reduced by 2.3 hours. The effects on higher-educated mothers are also substantial, though an effect on hours may reflect greater flexibility in hours worked while mothers enjoy job protection and employment benefits until children reach 12 months of age. For men, the evidence suggests small, significant income effects that are consistent with the literature on labour supply elasticities.

Suggested Citation

  • Schirle, Tammy, 2013. "The effect of universal child benefits on labour supply," CLSSRN working papers clsrn_admin-2013-43, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 26 Sep 2013.
    • Handle: RePEc:ubc:clssrn:clsrn_admin-2013-43
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.clsrn.econ.ubc.ca/workingpapers/CLSRN%20Working%20Paper%20no.%20125%20-%20Schirle.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • J18 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Public Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ubc:clssrn:clsrn_admin-2013-43. 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: Vivian Tran The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Vivian Tran to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.clsrn.econ.ubc.ca/ .

    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.