The Social Value of Becoming a Parent

描述（由申请人提供）：最近的估计表明，美国新生儿的净社会现值相当大，如果孩子出生于受过高等教育的父母，则高达25万美元。这个结果考虑了孩子一生的公共福利消费和税收支付，以及与孩子的后代相关的相应流动。这种正外部性的关键组成部分是公共产品的融资，支持医疗、教育和养老金计划的代际转移，以及政府债务的分担。用于发展这种估计的经济人口模型将人口或亚人口在特定年龄生育率方面视为同质的。然而，美国仍有相当比例的女性没有孩子，而且比例还在不断增长，而许多父亲完全不参与孩子的生活。鉴于那些成为父母的人和那些没有孩子的人在公共支出的贡献和消费方面可能存在差异，与第一次生育有关的外部性很可能与与第二次或更高次生育有关的外部性大不相同。拟议研究的目的是调查这种可能性，并量化过渡到为人父母的净财政影响。具体而言，该项目将(1)对税收、转移支付和公共产品消费的年龄分布进行估计，具体针对有子女和无子女的人；(2)将估计的年龄概况与先前开发的跨时期经济人口核算模型结合起来，以估算成为父母对社会的净现值（根据财政影响来衡量）。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Recent estimates indicate that the net present social value of a newborn child in the U.S. is quite large, as much as a quarter million dollars if the child is born to highly-educated parents. This result takes into account the child's lifetime consumption of public benefits and tax payments, as well as the corresponding flows associated with the child's descendants. Key components of this positive externality are the financing of public goods, intergenerational transfers supporting health, education, and pension programs, and the sharing of government debt. The economic-demographic models used to develop such estimates treat the population or subpopulations as homogeneous with respect to age-specific fertility. Yet a substantial, and growing, proportion of women in the U.S. remain childless, while many fathers remain completely uninvolved in their children's lives. In view of the likely differences between those who become parents, and those who remain childless, with respect to both the contributions to and the consumption of public expenditures, it is likely that the externality associated with a first birth is quite different from that associated with a second or higher-order birth. The purpose of the proposed study is to investigate this possibility, and to quantify the net fiscal impact of the transition to parenthood. In particular, this project will (1) produce estimates of the age profile of taxes, transfers, and the consumption of public goods, specific to parents and the childless; and (2) use the estimated age profiles in conjunction with a previously developed inter-temporal economic-demographic accounting model, in order to produce estimates of the net present value to society-measured with respect to fiscal impacts-of becoming a parent.