In most Western economies, the flourishing of the Welfare State has coincided with a decline of the role of the family … the informal safety net in a period when social protection was provided by the family. Once the State started offering … suitable alternatives, the taboo was no longer expedient, and was dropped. For the same reasons, marriage has become less …

in the usual way, and an unconventional one allowing them to qualify for a pension by having children, and investing time …

, how many children to have and subsequently whether to stay together or separate. We make precise the idea that cooperation … in a household can be supported by self interest. Since the costs of raising children are unequally distributed among … partners, there is a potential conflict between individually optimal and efficient, i.e. surplus maximizing, decisions. Side …

This paper studies the effect of child care provision on family structure. We present a model of a marriage market with … children and spousal specialization in home production of public goods and child care. We then study how child care provision …

Pooling microdata from five Australian censuses, I explore the relationship between child gender and divorce. By … contrast with the United States, I find no evidence that the gender of the first child has a significant impact on the decision … to marry or divorce. However, among two-child families, parents with two children of the same sex are 1.7 percentage …