Essays on Intra-household Distribution of Resource and Time

Essays on Intra-household Distribution of Resource and Time

Author: Gee Young Oh

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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This dissertation consists of three chapters. The first chapter empirically explores the relationships between intra-household time allocation choices and gender role bias, and the second chapter provides a structural model that rationalizes the empirical findings to study its policy implications. The third chapter explores the relationship between intra-household consumption distributions and subjective wellbeing of each gender. In the first two chapters, I study how gender role bias affects the time allocations of heterosexual working couples in labor, home production, and leisure, and the ramifications for distributional effects of policies that change effective wages. Using detailed time use data from Mexico and the U.K., I document that among working couples in both countries, as a female's relative wage increases, her relative labor hours decrease, and her relative home production hours increase. The pattern is seemingly puzzling but it can be rationalized if couples face disutility for breaking a social norm as females' share of household earnings increases. I then build a structural household model that incorporates gender role bias. Fitting the model to the U.K. data on working couples, I find that on average, disutility arising from gender role bias starts increasing when a female's earning share exceeds 0.45, that is, when she is nearly the breadwinner. Furthermore, I construct a measure of household-level bias using responses to survey questions on bias, and find that in more biased households, the disutility starts increasing when the female's earning share is lower. Using the model, I predict the effects of a fiscal policy that disproportionately increases females' effective wages. In particular, I find that when a given policy increases females' wages by 10 percent, the policy's effect on female labor supply is overestimated by 5 percentage points if gender role bias is not taken into account. In the third chapter, I study how intra-household inequality affects individuals' wellbeing where each member has the bargaining power to secure more household resources to be allocated for his/her interest. Unlike the existing literature that focuses on `absolute' resource levels, I explore another channel through which unequal intra-household resource distribution can affect an individual's wellbeing: by affecting `relative' resource as compared to the other household member. From detailed Mexican household-level survey data, I estimate an individual's resource level through a structural household model and explore its relationship with happiness, using self-reported subjective wellbeing as a proxy for happiness. I find that there is a negative correlation between relative resource levels and happiness for adult females. The negative correlation is consistent with studies that find domestic violence rates are higher for empowered females, or working females, who also consume more than those less empowered. However, the relation is insignificant for adult males.


Essays on Intra-household Distribution

Essays on Intra-household Distribution

Author: Raphaela Hyee

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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In the first chapter of this thesis, I develop a model that combines intrahousehold bargaining with competition on the marriage market - once married, spouses bargain over the allocation of total household income. They have the option of divorce and subsequent remarriage; the value of this outside option is determined endogenously on the marriage market. I use this model to analyse the educational choice. When more women than men obtain a university degree, men without degrees benefit; university educated men, however, are not able to translate this change on the marriage market into a significantly larger share of household income. Hence, men's incentive to invest in education decreases if women's educational attainment increases. Even without assuming any heterogeneity in tastes between men and women, equilibria arise in which men and women decide to become educated at different rates. The second chapter shows empirically, that a woman's propensity to separate from her partner depends positively on male wage inequality on her local marriage market - the more heterogeneous potential future mates are in terms of earnings power, the more likely a woman is to end her relationship. This effect is strongest for couples, where one has a college education but the other one does not. The effect is robust to the inclusion of a variety of controls on the individual level, as well as state and time fixed effects and state specific time trends. The third chapter (co-authored with Julio Robledo) develops a two period family decision making model in which spouse bargain over the allocation of individual time and consumption. If inter-temporally binding contracts are not feasible, household time allocation might be inefficient. We compare two threat point specifications, and show that the threat point specification can influence spouses time allocation, not only the distribution of private consumption.


Handbook of Population and Family Economics

Handbook of Population and Family Economics

Author: Mark Richard Rosenzweig

Publisher: North-Holland

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 716

ISBN-13:

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The collection of chapters in the "Handbook of Population and Family Economics" and their organization reflect the most recent developments in economics pertaining to population issues and the family. The rationale, contents, and organization of the "Handbook" evolve from three premises. First, the family is the main arena in which population outcomes are forged. Second, there are important interactions and significant causal links across all demographic phenomena. Third, the study of the size, composition, and growth of a population can benefit from the application of economic methodology and tools. The diversity and depth of the work reviewed and presented in the "Handbook" conveys both the progress that has been made by economists in understanding the forces shaping population processes, including the behavior of families, and the many questions, empirical and theoretical, that still remain. For more information on the Handbooks in Economics series, please see our home page on http: //www.elsevier.nl/locate/hes


Communities in Action

Communities in Action

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2017-04-27

Total Pages: 583

ISBN-13: 0309452961

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In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.


From Parent to Child

From Parent to Child

Author: Jere R. Behrman

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1995-08-15

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9780226041568

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How do parents allocate human capital among their children? To what extent do parental decisions about resource allocation determine children's eventual economic success? The analyses in From Parent to Child explore these questions by developing and testing a model in which the earnings of children with different genetic endowments respond differently to investments in human capital. Behrman, Pollak, and Taubman use this model to investigate issues such as parental bias in resource allocations based on gender or birth order; the extent of intergenerational mobility in income, earnings, and schooling in the United States; the relative importance of environmental and genetic factors in determining variations in schooling; and whether parents' distributions offset the intended effects of government programs designed to subsidize children. In allocating scarce resources, parents face a trade-off between equity and efficiency, between the competing desires to equalize the wealth of their children and to maximize the sum of their earnings. Building on the seminal work of Gary Becker, From Parent to Child integrates careful modeling of household behavior with systematic empirical testing, and will appeal to anyone interested in the economics of the family.


Economics of the Family

Economics of the Family

Author: Martin Browning

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-06-05

Total Pages: 511

ISBN-13: 1107728924

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The family is a complex decision unit in which partners with potentially different objectives make consumption, work and fertility decisions. Couples marry and divorce partly based on their ability to coordinate these activities, which in turn depends on how well they are matched. This book provides a comprehensive, modern and self-contained account of the research in the growing area of family economics. The first half of the book develops several alternative models of family decision making. Particular attention is paid to the collective model and its testable implications. The second half discusses household formation and dissolution and who marries whom. Matching models with and without frictions are analyzed and the important role of within-family transfers is explained. The implications for marriage, divorce and fertility are discussed. The book is intended for graduate students in economics and for researchers in other fields interested in the economic approach to the family.