Aggregate Effects of the Egg-Freezing Technology and Policy Implications

冷冻卵子技术的综合效应及政策启示

• 批准号: 505632465
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Alexander Ludwig
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Chair of Public Finance and Macroeconomic Dynamics
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Units
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/505632465?language=en
• 关键词: Aggregate; Effects; Egg; Freezing; Technology

Assisted reproductive techniques such as in-vitro fertilization (IVF) are increasingly becoming standard elements of fertility decisions as they circumvent the infertility constraints generated by delayed childbearing or biological characteristics of the couple. E.g., in Denmark, where the first three IVF treatments are subsidized, about 5% of all children were born after IVF in 2009. With new technological developments, women can freeze their eggs for future use to increase the chances of a life-birth after an IVF procedure. According to the Danish health authority, a total of 39,974 fertility treatments were undertaken in Denmark in 2019. These treatments lead to 7,465 pregnancies, 2,260 of which used frozen eggs (a fourfold increase compared to 2013). Similar increases are documented for the US, UK or Australia. Firms increasingly offer egg freezing as a wage perk of an employment contract. For example, in 2019, 5%, 13%, respectively 17% of all American companies with more than 500, 5,000, respectively 20,000, employees offer egg freezing as a benefit to female employees.The first objective of this research project is to characterize the demand of women for egg freezing and later IVF treatment in a life-cycle model with endogenous education, labor market participation and fertility. We will use a calibrated version of this model to investigate how the demand for egg freezing changes if its cost is entirely subsidized ─ as, e.g., in Denmark ─ and how this affects outcomes over the life cycle. As the second objective, we will bring in the firm’s perspective and model the motives for firms to offer egg freezing as a work perk of the optimal labor contract. The egg freezing technology provides insurance and at the same time enables firms to extract private information about the women’s preferences for children. We will bring together women and firms in a labor market matching model to characterize the optimal employment contract. Our model will provide an argument for why it may be optimal for females to reveal through the adoption of the egg freezing technology, at least partially, their unobserved preferences for children to firms as well as their willingness to delay child birth. Both public policy subsidizing egg-freezing and firms offering egg freezing as a work perk may have interesting effects on the gender wage gap, the effects of children on wages and on completed fertility. In order to calibrate our model, we will conduct empirical analyses on the basis of Danish registry data in order to measure success probabilities of IVF treatments (with and without prior egg freezing). We will complement this data analysis by a survey to measure subjective expectations of females on the success of egg-freezing and IVF treatments and their preferences for fertility in terms of early and late birth.

体外受精（IVF）等辅助生殖技术日益成为生育决定的标准要素，因为它们规避了推迟生育或夫妇生物学特征所产生的不育限制。例如，在一个示例中，在丹麦，前三种试管婴儿治疗都有补贴，2009年所有儿童中约有5%是在试管婴儿后出生的。随着新技术的发展，女性可以冷冻卵子供将来使用，以增加试管婴儿手术后的生命出生机会。根据丹麦卫生当局的数据，2019年丹麦共进行了39,974次生育治疗。这些治疗导致7，465例妊娠，其中2，260例使用冷冻卵子（与2013年相比增加了四倍）。美国、英国或澳大利亚也有类似的增长记录。越来越多的公司提供冷冻卵子作为雇佣合同的工资福利。例如，在2019年，500名、5,000名和20,000名员工以上的美国公司中，分别有5%、13%和17%为女性员工提供卵子冷冻作为福利。本研究项目的第一个目标是在具有内生教育的生命周期模型中描述女性对卵子冷冻和后期试管婴儿治疗的需求，劳动力市场参与和生育率。我们将使用这个模型的校准版本来研究如果卵子冷冻的成本完全得到补贴，在丹麦-以及这如何影响生命周期的结果。作为第二个目标，我们将引入企业的视角，并模拟企业提供卵子冷冻作为最优劳动合同的工作津贴的动机。卵子冷冻技术提供了保险，同时使公司能够提取有关妇女对孩子的偏好的私人信息。我们将在劳动力市场匹配模型中将妇女和企业聚集在一起，以描述最佳雇佣合同的特征。我们的模型将提供一个论点，为什么它可能是最佳的女性通过采用卵子冷冻技术，至少部分地透露，他们的未观察到的偏好的孩子的公司，以及他们愿意推迟生育。资助卵子冷冻的公共政策和提供卵子冷冻作为工作福利的公司可能对性别工资差距、子女对工资和完全生育率的影响产生有趣的影响。为了校准我们的模型，我们将在丹麦注册数据的基础上进行实证分析，以衡量IVF治疗的成功概率（有和没有预先冷冻卵子）。我们将通过一项调查来补充这一数据分析，以衡量女性对卵子冷冻和试管婴儿治疗成功的主观期望，以及她们对早育和晚育的偏好。