Germany has the lowest birth rate among all OECD countries. To encourage fertility, the federal government has recently introduced a set of reforms that led to a substantial expansion of public child care for under three year old children. Using administrative county-level data, we exploit...

This paper formulates a model to examine the effects of changes in tax-benefit policy on the behavior of divorced parents and the well-being of children in single-parent households. Noncustodial parents choose the level of a child support payment to transfer to custodians. These, in turn, decide...

Commissioned by the Federal Government, the "Overall Evaluation of Benefit Payments to Married Couples and Families" is the first study to systematically and comprehensively evaluate the key instruments of German family policy. The evaluation focused on the following family-policy goals:...

Mit der von der Bundesregierung in Auftrag gegebenen »Gesamtevaluation ehe- und familienbezogener Leistungen« wurden erstmals zentrale Instrumente der deutschen Familienpolitik systematisch und umfassend evaluiert. Dabei wurden folgende familienpolitische Ziele vorgegeben: die Sicherung der...

We consider a bargaining model in which husband and wife decide on the allocation of time and disposable income. Since her bargaining power would go down otherwise more strongly, the wife agrees to have a child only if the husband also leaves the labor market for a while. The daddy months...

This paper explores the implications of gender-based income taxation in a non-cooperative model of a couple's time allocation between market work and providing a household public good. We find that the optimal structure of differential taxation by gender is solely determined by spouses' relative...

This paper explores the implications of gender-based income taxation in a noncooperative model of household behavior. In a first step, we show how gender-based taxes can act as Pigou taxes and correct the externality induced by a non-cooperative household equilibrium. We find that the first-best...

This paper explores the implications of gender-based income taxation in a non- cooperative model of a couple’s time allocation between market work and providing a household public good. We find that the optimal structure of differential taxation by gender is solely determined by spouses’...

We consider a bargaining model in which husband and wife decide on the allocation of time and disposable income. Since her bargaining power would go down otherwise more strongly, the wife agrees to having a child only if the husband also leaves the labor market for a while. The daddy months...

We present a non-cooperative model of a family's time allocation between work and a home-produced public good, and examine whether the income tax should apply to couples or individuals. While tax-induced labor supply distortions lead to overprovision of the public good, spouses' failure to...