Bargaining over Babies: Theory, Evidence, and Policy Implications

By Matthias Doepke, F. Kindermann. The American Economic Review, 2019

188 citations recorded by the source corpus.

It takes a woman and a man to make a baby. This fact suggests that for a birth to take place, the parents should first agree on wanting a child. Using newly available data on fertility preferences and outcomes, we show that indeed, babies are likely to arrive only if both parents desire one. In addition, there are many couples who disagree on having babies, and in low-fertility countries women are much more likely than men to be opposed to having another child. We account for this evidence with a quantitative model of household bargaining in which the distribution of the burden of child care between mothers and fathers is a key determinant of fertility. The model implies that fertility is highly responsive to targeted policies that lower the child care burden specifically for mothers. (JEL C78, D13, J13, J16)

Subfields: Demography, Gender Studies, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2c78c285a41d104ed5d41a5e6688de9f16e3b327

Citations in the corpus

• Families in Macroeconomics (2016, unknown): “Doepke et al. (2015) suggest that the increase in labor force participation during the war was a major driver for the baby boom.”