The effects of family policy on labor supply and fertility decisions: Evidence from a dynamic structural micro-economic model with task-specific human capital, estimated using microdata for France and Germany

虽然法国和德国在许多社会经济方面相似，但它们的总生育率在经合发组织中处于相反的极端。多年来，德国的家庭政策一直试图提高低生育率，但收效甚微。我们认为，在经济理论的指导下，可以从系统比较中学到很多东西，这种比较以家庭政策和劳动力市场环境的详细建模为特征，并充分控制偏好的异质性。在建议的项目中，我们开发了一个具有内生生育率、职业和劳动力供给决策的可估计生命周期模型。这种模式是完全前瞻性的，因此女性会根据她们期望的生育水平和职业中断的成本来选择自己的职业。这些成本是由政策决定的，包括儿童保育、产假福利和与生育有关的就业保护政策的价格。它们还受到职业选择本身的影响：与不同类型的工作相关的任务篮子不同，放弃的经验回报和人力资本折旧也不同。我们的模型包括获得大学学位的决定；为了对不同的职业道路进行有意义的区分，我们开发了一种基于任务的方法。对教育、工作和生育的不同偏好确保我们不会错误地将结果的差异归因于制度设置的差异。我们执行广泛的模型检查，包括对保留样本的验证。估计德国和法国模型的可比较版本使我们能够将结果的差异分解为政策、劳动力市场环境和偏好的差异。我们还能够研究这三组解释因素之间可能的相互作用。我们还使用该模型更详细地研究了具体的家庭政策措施。我们的主要申请将是2007年德国育儿假福利改革。与现有的准实验研究不同，结构模型将使我们能够量化改革不同组成部分的单独影响，将改革影响与儿童保育扩大等伴随变化分离开来，并预测改革的长期生育率影响，将已完成生育率的变化与纯粹的时间效应区分开来。我们还将使用该模型来模拟当前育儿假法规制度的变化，并近似生育率和女性劳动力参与的有效边界，同时使总财政成本保持在当前水平不变。

Although France and Germany are similar in many socio-economic dimensions, their total fertility rates are at the opposite extremes of the spectrum found in the OECD. German family policy has sought to increase the low rate for years with little success. We believe that much can be learned from a systematic comparison that is guided by economic theory, features detailed modeling of family policy and labor market environments alike, and adequately controls for heterogeneity in preferences.In the proposed project, we develop an estimable life cycle model with endogenous fertility, career, and labor supply decisions. The model is fully forward-looking, so women choose their careers based on their desired fertility level and the costs of career breaks. These costs are shaped by policy through the prices of childcare, maternity leave benefits, and birth-related job protection policies. They are also influenced by the choice of career itself: Foregone returns to experience and human capital depreciation vary with the task baskets associated with different types of jobs. Our model includes the decision to obtain a university degree; in order to get a meaningful distinction between different career paths we develop a task based approach. Heterogeneous preferences for education, work and fertility ensure that we do not falsely attribute differences in outcomes to variation in the institutional setting. We perform extensive model checks, including validation on holdout samples. Estimating comparable versions of the model for Germany and France allows us to decompose differences in outcomes into differences in policy, the labor market environment, and preferences. We are also able to investigate possible interaction effects between these three sets of explanatory factors. We also use the model to study specific family policy measures in greater detail. Our main application will be the 2007 reform of parental leave benefits in Germany. Unlike the existing quasi-experimental studies, the structural model will allow us to quantify the separate effects of the different components of the reform, to isolate the reform effects from concomitant changes such as the expansion of childcare, and to predict the long-run fertility effects of the reform, distinguishing changes in completed fertility from pure timing effects. We will also use the model to simulate changes to the current system of parental leave regulations and to approximate the efficient frontier of fertility and female labor force participation, while leaving total fiscal cost constant at the present level.