IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cem/doctra/775.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Allocation problems in child benefit programs using a microeconomic theory approach

Author

Listed:
  • Tomas Artemio Marinozzi

Abstract

This paper intends to illustrate theoretical bases for positive factors as well as major problems associated with UCT and CCT programs. It is important to highlight that there is diverse empirical evidence regarding support schemes and their effects on schooling, health and nutrition. However, literature regarding the allocation of child benefit transfers between household members is rather limited. This paper provides a theoretical explanation of how conventional child benefit programs may have transmission problems, which may prove to be counterproductive in terms of social welfare. The allocation flaws are evident in the model and are very intuitive, however similar schemes have prevailed in practice. It is unclear to what extent these perceptions are borne out of a concern for children's (or individuals') wellbeing or are guided by political interests. For this reason, the last section of the paper offers a different perspective on certain programs, taking into consideration political incentives. The final aim is not necessarily to provide an optimal scheme but instead to draw attention to certain features of child benefit programs under a clear microeconomic scope.

Suggested Citation

  • Tomas Artemio Marinozzi, 2021. "Allocation problems in child benefit programs using a microeconomic theory approach," CEMA Working Papers: Serie Documentos de Trabajo. 775, Universidad del CEMA.
    • Handle: RePEc:cem:doctra:775
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ucema.edu.ar/publicaciones/download/documentos/775.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lynn Duggan, 1995. "Restacking the deck: Family policy and women's fall-back position in Germany before and after unification," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(1), pages 175-194.
    2. Barrett, Christopher B., 2002. "Food security and food assistance programs," Handbook of Agricultural Economics, in: B. L. Gardner & G. C. Rausser (ed.), Handbook of Agricultural Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 40, pages 2103-2190, Elsevier.
    3. Robert Pollak, 2003. "Gary Becker's Contributions to Family and Household Economics," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 111-141, January.
    4. Gary S. Becker & H. Gregg Lewis, 1974. "Interaction between Quantity and Quality of Children," NBER Chapters, in: Economics of the Family: Marriage, Children, and Human Capital, pages 81-90, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Evans, David K. & Popova, Anna, 2014. "Cash transfers and temptation goods : a review of global evidence," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6886, The World Bank.
    6. Dobkin, Carlos & Puller, Steven L., 2007. "The effects of government transfers on monthly cycles in drug abuse, hospitalization and mortality," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(11-12), pages 2137-2157, December.
    7. Joseph G. Altonji & Fumio Hayashi & Laurence Kotlikoff, "undated". "The Effects of Income and Wealth on Time and MOney Transfers Between Parents and Children," IPR working papers 96-5, Institute for Policy Resarch at Northwestern University.
    8. Alex Armand & Orazio Attanasio & Pedro Carneiro & Valérie Lechene, 0. "The Effect of Gender-Targeted Conditional Cash Transfers on Household Expenditures: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 130(631), pages 1875-1897.
    9. Christian Schluter & Jackline Wahba, 2010. "Are parents altruistic? Evidence from Mexico," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 23(3), pages 1025-1046, June.
    10. Richard H. Thaler, 2008. "Mental Accounting and Consumer Choice," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(1), pages 15-25, 01-02.
    11. Wolff, Francois-Charles & Laferrere, Anne, 2006. "Microeconomic models of family transfers," Handbook on the Economics of Giving, Reciprocity and Altruism, in: S. Kolm & Jean Mercier Ythier (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Altruism and Reciprocity, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 13, pages 889-969, Elsevier.
    12. Ariel Fiszbein & Norbert Schady & Francisco H.G. Ferreira & Margaret Grosh & Niall Keleher & Pedro Olinto & Emmanuel Skoufias, 2009. "Conditional Cash Transfers : Reducing Present and Future Poverty," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 2597.
    13. Chernichovsky, Dov & Zangwill, Linda, 1988. "Microeconomic theory of the household and nutrition programs," Policy Research Working Paper Series 82, The World Bank.
    14. Ibarrarán, Pablo & Medellín, Nadin & Regalia, Ferdinando & Stampini, Marco & Parodi, Sandro & Tejerina, Luis & Cueva, Pedro & Vásquez, Madiery, 2017. "How Conditional Cash Transfers Work," IDB Publications (Books), Inter-American Development Bank, number 8159, November.
    15. Alex Armand & Orazio Attanasio & Pedro Carneiro & Valérie Lechene, 2020. "The Effect of Gender-Targeted Conditional Cash Transfers on Household Expenditures: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 130(631), pages 1875-1897.
    16. Jeffrey D. Sachs, 1989. "Social Conflict and Populist Policies in Latin America," NBER Working Papers 2897, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Jef L. Leroy & Marie Ruel & Ellen Verhofstadt, 2009. "The impact of conditional cash transfer programmes on child nutrition: a review of evidence using a programme theory framework," Journal of Development Effectiveness, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(2), pages 103-129, June.
    18. Jenny C. Aker, 2017. "Comparing Cash and Voucher Transfers in a Humanitarian Context: Evidence from the Democratic Republic of Congo," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 31(1), pages 44-70.
    19. Altonji, Joseph G & Hayashi, Fumio & Kotlikoff, Laurence J, 1997. "Parental Altruism and Inter Vivos Transfers: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(6), pages 1121-1166, December.
    20. Sarah Baird & Francisco H.G. Ferreira & Berk Özler & Michael Woolcock, 2014. "Conditional, unconditional and everything in between: a systematic review of the effects of cash transfer programmes on schooling outcomes," Journal of Development Effectiveness, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(1), pages 1-43, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bhanot, Syon P. & Han, Jiyoung & Jang, Chaning, 2018. "Workfare, wellbeing and consumption: Evidence from a field experiment with Kenya’s urban poor," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 372-388.
    2. Nikolov, Plamen & Adelman, Alan, 2019. "Do private household transfers to the elderly respond to public pension benefits? Evidence from rural China," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 14(C).
    3. Ana Fernandes, 2011. "Altruism, labor supply and redistributive neutrality," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 24(4), pages 1443-1469, October.
    4. M. Caridad Araujo & Mariano Bosch & Norbert Schady, 2017. "Can Cash Transfers Help Households Escape an Intergenerational Poverty Trap?," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of Poverty Traps, pages 357-382, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Almås, Ingvild & Somville, Vincent, 2020. "The effect of gender-targeted transfers: Experimental Evidence from India," CEPR Discussion Papers 15218, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Barnet-Verzat, Christine & Wolff, Francois-Charles, 2002. "Motives for pocket money allowance and family incentives," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 339-366, June.
    7. World Bank Group, 2016. "Cash Transfers in Humanitarian Contexts," World Bank Publications - Reports 24699, The World Bank Group.
    8. Charlotte Ringdal & Ingrid Hoem Sjursen, 2021. "Household Bargaining and Spending on Children: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 88(350), pages 430-455, April.
    9. Tilman Brück & Oscar Mauricio Díaz Botía & Neil T. N. Ferguson & Jérôme Ouédraogo & Zacharias Ziegelhöfer, 2019. "Assets for Alimentation? The Nutritional Impact of Assets-based Programming in Niger," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(S1), pages 55-74, December.
    10. Musaddiq, Tareena & Said, Farah, 2023. "Educate the girls: Long run effects of secondary schooling for girls in Pakistan," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    11. Molina, José Alberto & Navarro Paniagua, Maria & Walker, Ian, 2007. "Mums and Their Sons, Dads and Their Daughters: Panel Data Evidence of Interdependent Marginal Utilities across 14 EU Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 2734, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Stéphane Mechoulan & François-Charles Wolff, 2015. "Intra-household allocation of family resources and birth order: evidence from France using siblings data," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 28(4), pages 937-964, October.
    13. Ringdal, Charlotte & Sjursen, Ingrid Hoem, 2017. "Household bargaining and spending on children: Experimental evidence from Tanzania," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 19/2017, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    14. Alexander Ahammer & Analisa Packham, 2020. "Dying to Work: Effects of Unemployment Insurance on Health," NBER Working Papers 27267, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. White, Justin S. & Basu, Sanjay, 2016. "Does the benefits schedule of cash assistance programs affect the purchase of temptation goods? Evidence from Peru," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 70-89.
    16. Somdeep Chatterjee & Prashant Poddar, 2021. "From Safe Motherhood to Cognitive Ability: Exploring Intrahousehold and Intergenerational Spillovers," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 88(352), pages 1075-1106, October.
    17. repec:bla:scandj:v:103:y:2001:i:3:p:415-43 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Verónica Amarante & Marco Manacorda & Edward Miguel & Andrea Vigorito, 2016. "Do Cash Transfers Improve Birth Outcomes? Evidence from Matched Vital Statistics, Program, and Social Security Data," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 8(2), pages 1-43, May.
    19. J. Michael Collins & Elizabeth Odders-White, 2021. "Allowances: Incidence in the US and Relationship to Financial Capability in Young Adulthood," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 533-544, September.
    20. Ryckembusch, David & Frega, Romeo & Silva, Marcio Guilherme & Gentilini, Ugo & Sanogo, Issa & Grede, Nils & Brown, Lynn, 2013. "Enhancing Nutrition: A New Tool for Ex-Ante Comparison of Commodity-based Vouchers and Food Transfers," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 58-67.
    21. James J. Heckman, 2015. "Introduction to A Theory of the Allocation of Time by Gary Becker," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0(583), pages 403-409, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Child Benefit Programs; Family Economics; Conditional Cash Transfer Programs; Unconditional Cash Transfer Programs.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cem:doctra:775. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Valeria Dowding (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cemaaar.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.