Subsidizing the Stork: New Evidence on Tax Incentives and Fertility / Kevin Milligan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Milligan, Kevin.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w8845.

NBER working paper series no. w8845

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Subsidizing the Stork

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2002.

Summary:

Variation in tax policy presents an opportunity to estimate the responsiveness of fertility to prices. This paper exploits the introduction of a pro-natalist transfer policy in the Canadian province of Quebec that paid up to C$8,000 to families having a child. I implement a quasi-experimental strategy by forming treatment and control groups defined by time, jurisdiction, and family type. This permits a triple-difference estimator to be implemented -- both on the program's introduction and cancellation. Furthermore, the incentive was available broadly, rather than to a narrow subset of the population as studied in the literature on AFDC and fertility. This provides a unique opportunity to investigate heterogeneous responses. I find a strong effect of the policy on fertility, and some evidence of a heterogeneous response that may help reconcile these results with the AFDC literature.

Notes:

Print version record

March 2002.