Education, Labour Supply and Marriage

在大多数国家，不平等和儿童成就是公共政策辩论的中心问题。旨在减轻贫穷或改善处境不利儿童机会的政策往往构成政府福利方案的支柱。但是，如果没有对这些结果的驱动因素的严格了解，这些政策可能无法实现其目标。然而，贫困和成绩不佳并没有得到很好的理解。它们是个人和家庭在整个生命过程中所作决定的复杂网络的结果。有三个决定尤为关键：教育、劳动力供应和婚姻。它们的重要性源于它们对幸福的长期影响，对儿童的结果以及对家庭内部和整个社会的资源分配的影响。在很大程度上，这些影响是由一生中教育、劳动力供应和婚姻之间的紧密联系所驱动的。例如，教育被理解为促进就业和代代相传的技能。既然收入和孩子的教育是家庭所看重的，那么教育一定是婚姻的宝贵资产。事实上，有证据表明，妻子和丈夫的教育程度是密切相关的。配偶的受教育程度将影响家庭资源及其分配，特别是对子女的分配。反过来，教育投资本身是由其在就业、收入、婚姻和家庭资源分配方面的可能回报决定的。这些回报的任何变化，可能是由政策改革引起的，都会导致教育决策的调整，并在一生中造成连锁反应。过去的研究已经证明了其中一些联系的重要性。但是，还没有在一个共同的框架内对它们进行调查，这个框架能够处理它们之间的所有联系，并解释它们对收入分配或儿童结局的影响。我们还知道，税收和福利制度的变化对其中一些结果有重大的直接影响，但我们对教育等前瞻性决策的间接反应所引发的长期影响知之甚少。在这个项目中，我们将有助于更好地理解重大决策之间的终身联系，这些决定对配偶和子女福祉的影响，以及它们对政策设计的影响。为此目的，我们将发展一种教育、劳动力供应、婚姻和家庭资源分配的模式，明确处理它们的终生联系和后果。该模型将提供新的系统证据，证明主要个人和家庭决策与结果之间联系的本质，它们与福利政策设计的相关性，以及它们在英国、美国和瑞典等国家的实证意义。将明确包括现代税收和福利制度的许多方面，例如累进税或有子女家庭的工作津贴。共同审议个人和家庭在一生中的决定，以及对现代税收制度主要特征的描述，将使我们第一次能够正式讨论为家庭设计税收和福利的问题。我们希望这项研究产生的证据能够为政策制定做出重大贡献，帮助他们了解如何平衡个人和家庭行为的关键方面，以设计家庭税收和福利。

In most countries, inequality and child achievement are at the centre of public policy debate. Policies aimed at alleviating poverty or improving the opportunities of disadvantaged children often form the backbone of government welfare programmes. But such policies may fail to achieve their goals if not informed by a rigorous knowledge of what drives these outcomes.However, poverty and underachievement are not well understood. They are the result of a complex net of decisions taken throughout the course of life by both the individual and the family. Three decisions are particularly crucial: education, labour supply and marriage. Their importance stems from the long-run effects they have for wellbeing, the outcomes of children and the distribution of resources within the family and across society as a whole. To a large extent, these effects are driven by the strong interconnections between education, labour supply and marriage over the lifetime.For instance, education is understood to promote employment and the transmission of skills across generations. Since income and children's education are valued by families, education must be a valuable asset for marriage. Indeed, evidence shows that the education of wife and husband are strongly positively related. Spouses' education will then affect household resources and their allocation, particularly towards children. In turn, education investments are themselves determined by their likely returns in terms of employment, earnings, marriage and the distribution of household resources. Changes in any of these returns, maybe induced by a policy reform, lead to adjustments in education decisions and cause a chain response over the course of life. The importance of some of these links has been demonstrated by past research. But they have not been investigated in a common framework capable of dealing with all their interconnections and explaining their consequences for the distribution of income or children's outcomes. We also know that changes in the tax and benefit system have a significant direct effect on some of these outcomes, but we know a lot less about their long-run effects triggered by indirect responses on forward-looking decisions like education.In this project, we will contribute to a better understanding of the lifetime links between major decisions, their consequences for the wellbeing of spouses and children, and their implications for policy design. To this end, we will develop a model of education, labour supply, marriage and the distribution of resources within the household that explicitly deals with their lifetime links and consequences. The model will produce new systematic evidence on the nature of connections between major individual and family decisions and outcomes, their relevance for welfare policy design and their empirical significance in countries like the UK, US and Sweden.Many aspects of a modern tax and benefit system will be explicitly included, such as progressive taxation or work-contingent benefits for families with children. The joint consideration of individual and family decisions over the course of life together with a description of the main features of a modern tax system will allow us to discuss formally the design of taxes and benefits for families for the first time. We expect the evidence produced by this research to make a significant contribution towards informing policymaking on how to balance key aspects of individual and family behaviour for the design of taxes and benefits for families.