Children and Household Economic Behavior

Abstract

This paper looks at some of the methodological issues that arise in modeling the effects of children on household behavior and presents some estimates for selected areas. For our purposes household behavior will be taken to refer to household decisions on labor supply the allocation of expenditure to different periods... and the decision as to what to do with the difference between income and expenditure....I shall be concerned mainly with the effects of dependent children...[and] I restrict attention largely to Western societies. (EXCERPT)