2022 Fiscal Year Annual Research 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, 特任助教 (70835701)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2019-04-01 – 2023-03-31
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| Keywords | Gender difference / Household welfare / Time allocation / Value of time |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Our research aims to understand how transport and childcare policies can enhance welfare, efficiency, and gender equality by introducing different time constraints for married couples.
We theoretically develop an intertemporal utility model that captures married couples’ trade-offs among different activities in life stages. We derive married couples’ values of time (VOTs) before and after their first child reaches school age.
We empirically find that the wives’ VOT is more than 4400 yen/hour before the school age of their first child but becomes around 400 yen/hour after the first child reaches school age. Conversely, the husbands’ VOTs do not change much. These indicate that wives’ the primary role in childcare and time burden by running between work and family tasks, while husbands are not affected.
For some dual-income couples, their VOT for childcare is greater than 28000 yen/hour after the school age of the first child, implying insufficient time for children and work-life imbalance. Our simulations find that work-from-home option could improve household welfare more than transport improvement and childcare supports.
This study contributes to gender, childcare, and urban-transport planning. Our method illustrates the within-couple gender differences in VOTs and childcare burden for dual-income families. Transport policies should also carefully account for their impacts on VOT, particularly for mothers with young children, rather than just defining VOT by wage rate.
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