Efficient intra-household allocation of parental leave

Arbeitspapier

We propose a model of how parents resolve conflicts about sharing the negative short and long-term consequences from parenthood-related career interruptions on earnings. We introduce childcare sharing in a collective model of household behavior with public consumption as in Blundell, Chiappori, and Meghier (2005). Conceptually, the solution to the household problem can be thought of as a two-stage process: Parents first agree on public expenditures on professional childcare; then, conditional on the level of public consumption and the budget constraint stemming from stage one, parents determine their individual job absence durations and private consumption shares. Using relative income measures from German parental benefit data as distribution factors, we find evidence for Pareto efficiency in childcare sharing. More precisely, households with higher total incomes purchase more professional childcare, and changes in distribution factors shift the conditional parental leave allocation in favor of the partner whose relative income increased.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 5113

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Household Production and Intrahousehold Allocation ; Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure; Domestic Abuse ; Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
• Subject: childcare ; collective model ; conditional sharing rule ; intra-household allocation

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Parys, Juliane ; Schwerhoff, Gregor
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2010

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/44168
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-201010132689
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET