Who Bears the Full Costs of Children?

Abstract

This paper measures how the costs of children are shared between the father and the mother by estimating a gender specific demand system related to the demand for market goods, household products and leisure within a collective approach. The estimates illustrate how the intra-household distribution of resources varies across households with and without children and how wages and non-labor income affect the allocation rule in both one-earner and double-earner households. In the presence of a child, both parents, but mothers especially, increase their involvement in home production at the expense of the enjoyment of leisure. This commitment decreases as the child gets older. In general, mothers control less than half of the household resources, while they bear more than half of the cost of maintaining a child.