The Stress Cost of Children

Working Paper No. 21223 We use longitudinal data describing couples in Australia from 2001-12 and Germany from 2002-12 to examine how demographic events affect perceived time and financial stress. Consistent with the view of measures of stress as proxies for the Lagrangean multipliers in models of h...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:NBER Working Paper Series 2015-05, p.21223
Main Authors: Buddelmeyer, Hielke, Hamermesh, Daniel S, Wooden, Mark
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Births
Child care
Children & youth
Costs
Couples
Economic theory
Effects
Households
Lagrange multiplier
Longitudinal studies
Parents & parenting
Polls & surveys
Statistical analysis
Stress
Utility functions
Wage rates
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Summary:Working Paper No. 21223 We use longitudinal data describing couples in Australia from 2001-12 and Germany from 2002-12 to examine how demographic events affect perceived time and financial stress. Consistent with the view of measures of stress as proxies for the Lagrangean multipliers in models of household production, we show that births increase time stress, especially among mothers, and that the effects last at least several years. Births generally also raise financial stress slightly. The monetary equivalent of the costs of the extra time stress is very large. While the departure of a child from the home reduces parents' time stress, its negative impacts on the tightness of the time constraints are much smaller than the positive impacts of a birth.
ISSN:0898-2937
DOI:10.3386/w21223