Suchergebnisse

A methodology to describe the distributional and behavioural effects of child care subsidies is presented within a micro simulation framework. We discuss the effects of changing the governmental policy to support families with preschool children, from today's subsidisation of spaces at child care centres to an equal cash transfer to all families with preschoolers. In the decision model applied (Michalopoulos et al. 1992) the mother chooses consumption, market time and average quality of child care. The model is adjusted to the Norwegian child care market and data for mothers who both are employed and receiving child care subsidies (1990) are used, since this group of mothers is assumed to respond most to the reform. Weaknesses in data and simplifying model assumptions imply that the results must be used with caution. Results from our simulation experiment do not indicate any large decrease in mothers labour supply, when altering the transfer system. The reform will give a substantial decrease in inequality among households with preschoolers, since the child care subsidies very much favour well-off households.

Models of labor supply derived from stochastic utility representations and discretized sets of feasible hours of work have gained popularity because they are more practical than the standard approaches based on marginal calculus. In this paper we argue that practicality is not the only feature that can be addressed by means of stochastic choice theory. This theory also offers a powerful framework for developing a more realistic model for labor supply choices, founded on individuals having preferences over jobs and facing restrictions on the choice of jobs and hours of work. We discuss and clarify how this modeling framework deviates from both the conventional discrete approach (Van Soest, 1995), as well as the standard textbook approach based on marginal calculus (Hausman, 1985). It is argued that a model based on job choice opens up for a more realistic representation of the choice environment, and consequently offers the possibility of conducting a richer set of simulations of alternative policies