Search Results
Title: Essays on Household Economics
Resulting in 1 citation.
| 1. |
Bernal, Raquel |
|
Essays on Household Economics Ph.D. Dissertation, New York University, 2003 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79 Publisher: UMI - University Microfilms, Bell and Howell Information and Learning Keyword(s): Child Care; Maternal Employment; Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) In the first essay, I develop and estimate a dynamic model of employment and child care decisions of women after birth in order to evaluate the effects of mothers' decisions on children's cognitive ability. I use data from the NLSY to estimate the model. A common limitation of previous studies that have used data from the NLSY to assess the impact of maternal employment on children's outcomes is that they have failed to fully control for potential biases that may arise as a result of the fact that women that work/use child care are may be systematically different from women that do not work/do not use child care, and the fact that child's cognitive ability may influence mother's decisions. In order to deal with these sample selection issues I develop a model of work and child care choices of women after birth and estimate it jointly with the child's cognitive ability production function. The results suggest that the effects of maternal employment and child care use on children's cognitive ability are rather sizeable. In fact, having a full-time working mother who uses child care during the first 5 years after birth is associated with a 10.4% reduction in ability test scores. The second essay uses a general equilibrium model of marriage and divorce to assess how public policies on maternity and paternity leave and leave benefits affect intra-household decision making, family structure, intergenerational mobility and the distribution of income. This research is motivated by the fact that the U.S. has a parental leave policy that is not as extensive as in other industrialized countries. We calibrated our model to replicate some characteristics relevant to the interaction between the marriage and labor market. We stark with a benchmark economy in which only women are allowed to take time off with their children. We then analyze how this economy is affected by three different parental leave policies: availability of paternity leave, paid maternity leave benefits and paid paternity and maternity leave benefits. |
|
|
Bibliography Citation
Bernal, Raquel. Essays on Household Economics. Ph.D. Dissertation, New York University, 2003. |