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Financial incentives and the timing of birth
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Ohinata, Asako (2011) Financial incentives and the timing of birth. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Abstract
This thesis studies how financial incentives affect women's fertility timing decisions.
Each chapter investigates this question by looking at a policy that exogenously increased fertility related financial incentives. The timing impacts of these policies are
estimated using a discrete-time proportional hazard model with unobserved heterogeneity.
In the first chapter, the impact of the 1999 UK Working Families Tax Credit
(WFTC) on the timing of birth is studied. This paper employs the 1991-2003 waves
of the British Household Panel Survey and identifies the policy impact of WFTC by
observing the change in the timing of birth using a difference in differences estimator.
The main finding of this paper suggests little evidence of changes in the timing of
all birth parity apart from first birth. Such a finding is likely to be explained
by the policy design of WFTC that increased not only the fertility but also the
labour supply incentives simultaneously. Moreover, a further analysis highlights the
importance of other policies, which also in
uenced women's labour supply during
the period of study.
The second chapter, on the other hand, studies the impact of the 1977-2001 US
infertility health insurance mandates, which regulated the insurance companies to
cover for infertility treatment cost. Although the majority of the past literature
has studied impacts on older women who are likely to seek treatment, this paper
proposes that the mandates may have had a wider impact on the US population.
Specifically, it may have given an option for younger women to delay birth since
these policies reduced the opportunity cost of having a child in the future. The
chapter employs the 1980-2001 Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Results suggest a
significant delay of 1-2 years in the time of first birth among highly educated white
women.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman |
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Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Childbirth -- Economic aspects, Infertility -- Economic aspects, Tax incentives | ||||
Official Date: | February 2011 | ||||
Dates: |
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Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of Economics | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Arulampalam, Wiji ; Stewart, Mark ; Walker, Ian, 1954- | ||||
Sponsors: | University of Warwick. Dept. of Economics ; Royal Economic Society (Great Britain) | ||||
Language: | eng |
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