Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/57284 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 3763
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
This paper studies the effect of child care provision on family structure. We present a model of a marriage market with positive assortative matching, where in equilibrium the poorest women stay single. Couples have to decide on the number of children and spousal specialization in home production of public goods and child care. We then study how child care provision affects the equilibrium. Due to specialization in home production, the incentive to use child care is smaller for married mothers than for single mothers. We show that this increases the number of single mothers and the divorce rate. Using survey data from Germany, we also present empirical evidence which is consistent with this finding.
Subjects: 
marriage
divorce
single parenthood
child care
JEL: 
J12
J13
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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