IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/vfsc13/79827.html

Gender Power, Fertility, and Family Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Kemnitz, Alexander
  • Thum, Marcel

Abstract

The birth of children often shifts the power balance within a family. If family decisions are made according to the spouses' welfare function, this shift in power may lead to a time consistency problem. The allocation of resources after the birth of children may differ from the ex-ante optimal choice. In a model of cooperative decision making within a family, we show that this time consistency problem leads to a systematic downward bias in fertility choices. By keeping fertility low, families try to mitigate the ex-ante undesired shift in the power balance. This bias in fertility choices provides scope for welfare enhancing policy intervention. We discuss the extent to which existing measures in family policy are suitable to overcome the fertility bias.

Suggested Citation

  • Kemnitz, Alexander & Thum, Marcel, 2013. "Gender Power, Fertility, and Family Policy," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79827, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:vfsc13:79827
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/79827/1/VfS_2013_pid_471.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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. Volker Meier & Matthew D. Rablen, 2024. "Political economy of redistribution between traditional and modern families," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 31(4), pages 980-1008, August.
    2. Volker Meier & Helmut Rainer, 2017. "Daddy months," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 30(3), pages 875-892, July.
    3. Akira Yakita, 2018. "Fertility and education decisions and child-care policy effects in a Nash-bargaining family model," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 31(4), pages 1177-1201, October.
    4. Fabian Kindermann & Matthias Doepke, 2014. "Bargaining over Babies," 2014 Meeting Papers 670, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    5. Schaubert, Marianna, 2018. "Do Alimony Regulations Matter inside Marriage? Evidence from the 2008 Reform of the German Maintenance Law," VfS Annual Conference 2018 (Freiburg, Breisgau): Digital Economy 181508, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    6. Gerhard Glomm & Volker Meier, 2020. "Efficient child care subsidies: any need for cash for care?," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 773-793, September.
    7. Takuya Obara & Yoshitomo Ogawa, 2024. "Optimal taxation in an endogenous fertility model with non-cooperative behavior," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 173-197, March.
    8. Linda Cohen & Amihai Glazer, 2017. "Bargaining within the family can generate a political gender gap," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 15(4), pages 1399-1413, December.
    9. Ryo Sakamoto, 2023. "Family bargaining over parental leave: A collective household model with endogenous gender power," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(5), pages 613-637, December.
    10. Elisabeth Gugl & Linda Welling, 2017. "Efficiency of Family Bargaining Models with Renegotiation: The Role of Transferable Utility across Periods," Studies in Microeconomics, , vol. 5(1), pages 53-83, June.
    11. Abad, Nicolas & Etner, Johanna & Raffin, Natacha & Seegmuller, Thomas, 2025. "New fertility patterns: The role of human versus physical capital," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 228(C).
    12. Marianna Schaubert, 2023. "Do Alimony Regulations Matter Inside Marriage? Evidence from the 2008 Reform of the German Maintenance Law," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 44(1), pages 145-178, June.
    13. Wang, Ruiting & Xu, Gang, 2020. "Can child allowances improve fertility in a gender discrimination economy?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 162-174.
    14. Doepke, Matthias & Kindermann, Fabian, 2014. "Intrahousehold Decision Making and Fertility," IZA Discussion Papers 8726, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household

    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:zbw:vfsc13:79827. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfsocea.html .

    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.