2019 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Welfare Analysis of Childcare and Transport Policies for Married Couples: A Microeconomic Study
| Project/Area Number |
19K13673
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| Research Institution | Tohoku University |
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Principal Investigator |
羅 婉慈 東北大学, 情報科学研究科, 学術研究員 (70835701)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2019-04-01 – 2022-03-31
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| Keywords | Time Allocation / Intertemporal Choice / Commute Pattern / Value of Time / Gender Equality |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Previous studies on household welfare and the interaction among household members in terms of the resource allocation and time use have been reviewed. We found that the understanding of how household members evaluate their values of time across their lifespans is limited. Focusing on the households with a married couple in particular, we assume that the couple’s behaviors not only depend on the family structure at the time but could possibly affect their decisions at other time points. We have been developing a theoretical framework that accounts for the household’s intertemporal utility over three life stages: before their children were born, after their children were born, and after their children became independent grown-ups.
The model consists of the household’s discounted utility, the income constraint, the time budgets of the husband and wife, and the technology constraints (e.g. childrearing skills) at each time point. The Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions corresponding to the utility function and the constraints have been derived. The theoretical results further yields that an individual’s value of time at each time point not only is associated with the Lagrange multipliers of income and time constraints at the time but could be associated with the deposit interest rate. Using the envelop theorem, we obtained the household’s indirect utility as a function of the household’s incomes, dwelling price, childrearing cost, the married couple’s commute times, and their sociodemographic characteristics (e.g. age and education attainment).
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
Our theoretical development is now in the final stage. The derivation process of the theoretical framework is currently being examined. We are approximating the difference in the household’s indirect utility between different commute choices using the second-order Taylor expansion. Meanwhile, we are starting the empirical section with the application of the discrete choice model and with the enumeration of the possible commute choices for the married couple before and after their children were born.
The data that we plan to apply are the Keio Household Panel Survey (KHPS) and the Japan Household Panel Survey (KHPS) conducted by the Panel Data Research Center (PDRC) at Keio University. We are investigating the availability of the variables of interest (i.e. household income, dwelling cost, childrearing cost, the commute times of the couple, and their sociodemographic factors) based on the PDRC’s survey questionnaires.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
In the near future, we will submit an application to the PDRC at Keio University in order to obtain the access to the 2004-2018 KHPS data and the 2009-2018 JHPS data. We will start to conduct the regression analysis once the panel data are available. After we obtain the estimated coefficients, we will compare how the married couple’s values of time would vary before and after their children were born. We will also examine how transport and childcare-related policies could influence the married couple’s utility and the associated decision. The manuscript based on the results of our analysis will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal. Moreover, the computable general equilibrium model will be alternatively used to supplement the current method from the perspective of market equilibria.
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| Causes of Carryover |
The ESRI ARCGIS license and the desktop computer for the geographic analysis have not been purchased yet. The incurring amount will be used to complete the purchase in the next fiscal year.
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