Welfare and macroeconomic effects of family policies: insights from an OLG model

What are the welfare and macroeconomic effects of family policies and how do they depend on policy composition? I answer those questions in overlapping generations model calibrated to the US. I account for the idiosyncratic income risk, redistribution via social security, and tax and benefit system. I explicitly model child-related tax credit, child care subsidies, and child allowance. I show the expansion of the family policy yields higher welfare. The expenditure on the optimal policy accounts for approximately 3% of GDP. Even though the optimal family policy is three times bigger than the status quo policy, taxes decrease when the optimal policy is implemented. Therefore, reform is self-financing. The structure of family policy is crucial for welfare evaluation. Tax credit and child allowance generate higher welfare gains than child care.