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。旨在减轻贫困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，如果不对这些结果的驱动因素有严格的了解，这些政策可能无法实现其目标。它们是个人和家庭在整个生命过程中作出的一系列复杂决定的结果。有三项决定尤为关键：教育、劳动力供应和婚姻。它们的重要性源于它们对福祉、儿童的成果以及家庭内部和整个社会的资源分配的长期影响。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驱动的。既然收入和子女教育是家庭看重的，那么教育一定是婚姻的宝贵财富。事实上，有证据表明，妻子和丈夫的教育程度是密切相关的。配偶的教育将影响家庭资源及其分配，特别是对子女的分配。反过来，教育投资本身也取决于其在就业、收入、婚姻和家庭资源分配方面的可能回报。任何一种回报的变化，可能是由政策改革引起的，都会导致教育决策的调整，并在一生中引起连锁反应。过去的研究已经证明了其中一些联系的重要性。但是，这些问题没有在一个共同的框架内得到研究，这个框架能够处理所有这些问题的相互联系，并解释它们对收入分配或儿童结果的影响。我们也知道，税收和福利制度的变化对其中一些结果有显著的直接影响，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，其对配偶和子女福祉的影响，及其对政策设计的影响。为此，我们将制定一个教育、劳动力供应、婚姻和家庭内部资源分配的模式，明确处理其一生的联系和后果。该模型将提供新的系统性证据，说明个人和家庭重大决策和结果之间的联系性质、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经验意义。现代税收和福利制度的许多方面将明确包括在内，例如累进税或有子女家庭的工作或有子女福利。将个人和家庭在一生中的决定结合起来考虑，并描述现代税收制度的主要特征，将使我们能够首次正式讨论家庭税收和福利的设计。我们希望这项研究所产生的证据能够为政策制定提供信息，说明如何平衡个人和家庭行为的关键方面，以便为家庭设计税收和福利。

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.