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

尽管法国和德国在许多社会经济层面上相似，但他们的总生育率与经合组织的数据截然相反。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。我们相信，从以经济理论为指导的系统比较中，可以学到很多东西，包括对家庭政策和劳动力市场环境的详细建模，以及对偏好异质性的充分控制。在拟议的项目中，我们开发了一个具有内生生育率、职业生涯和劳动力供应决策的可评估的生命周期模型。该模型完全是前瞻性的，因此女性根据她们想要的生育水平和职业中断的成本来选择职业。这些成本是由政策通过儿童保育、产假福利和与生育相关的工作保护政策的价格决定的。他们还受到职业选择本身的影响：以往的经验回报和人力资本折旧因与不同类型工作相关的任务篮子而异。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、工作和生育率的不同偏好确保了我们不会错误地将结果差异归因于机构设置的差异。我们执行广泛的模型检查，包括对坚持的样本进行验证。通过估计德国和法国的可比模型版本，我们可以将结果的差异分解为政策、劳动力市场环境和偏好的差异。我们还能够调查这三组解释因素之间可能的交互作用。我们还利用该模型对具体的家庭政策措施进行了更详细的研究。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，将改革影响与相应的变化(如扩大儿童保育规模)分开，并预测改革的长期生育影响，区分完全生育率的变化和纯粹的时间效应。我们还将使用该模型来模拟当前育儿假法规制度的变化，并近似计算生育率和女性劳动力参与的有效前沿，同时保持当前水平的总财政成本不变。

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.