The Effect of a Husband's Household Production Activity on a Couple's Additional Desired Children : The Empirical Evidence From Micro Data

Abstract

According to the typical household production model, we predict that increases in married women's wage leads to increases in their labor supply and reductions in the demand for children. However, we recently observe the positive correlation between female labor market participation rates and fertility at the macro level. This contradiction is thought to be caused by the simplification of the model at the micro level, that is, it does not take account of a husband's time allocation in the household although it leads to decreases in the opportunity costs of children. Japanese fertility started to decline since the middle of the 1970s and continued to decrease up until now. So, Japanese Government has strengthened the measures to cope with low fertility issues and began to emphasize the measure to promote men's involvement into housework and childcare in 2002. The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the effect of a husband's household production activity on a couple's additional desired children after controlling the variables of the typical Becker's model. We used new cross-section data from household survey in Hyogo Prefecture. The empirical results show that a husband's household production activity has a positive effect on a couple's additional desired children, particularly in both the bread-winner household and the household which the wife work as a part-time.