Jill Tiefenthaler

An Economic Analysis of Domestic Violence

While economists have been studying the family as an economic unit for almost thirty years, most models have focused on cooperative family units. Domestic violence, one of the most widespread violent crimes against women, is one example of a family unit that is better explained as a noncooperative re1ationship. In this paper, a noncooperative model of domestic violence is presented. The comparative statics from this model predict that womens incomes and other financial support received from outside the marriage (family, welfare, shelters, divorce settlements, etc.) will decrease the level of violence in intact families because they increase the womans threat point. Implications of the theoretical model are discussed and empirical evidence is summarized. The results from existing and new analysis provide support for the hypothesis that improved economic opportunities for women will decrease the level of violence in abusive re1ationships.

What Is Fair? Experimental Evidence

There has been growing interest within the economics discipline in the role of equity concerns in the distribution of resources. This paper presents empirical evidence from controlled laboratory experiments where third-party decision makers allocate resources between two individuals. The experimental results indicate that subjects view a wide range of different allocations as the fair distribution of resources. However, regression analysis indicates that both treatment effects and a few demographic variables explain some of this variation in fairness concepts. Most significantly, decision makers rewarded subjects who earned their favorable positions, and the gender of the decision maker was an important predictor of the allocation chosen.

Fertility and family time allocation in the Philippines.

Data from the 1983-84 Cebu Health and Nutritional Survey and follow-ups were used in this study of time allocation by family type in the Philippines. The data pertain to Cebu City and surrounding provincial areas. The sample included 3080 mothers with a live birth in nuclear families. Time allocation data were available at baseline and 2 6 and 14 months postnatally. The baseline sample included 282 households with no children prior to the birth of the sample child 790 households with only young children prior to the birth 775 households with both young and older children prior to the birth and 138 households with only older children prior to the birth. Mothers provided 84% of the total time spent on child care. The average total hours worked per week for first-time mothers more than doubled after the birth. Labor market hours declined after the birth and increased as the child aged but not to the same level as prenatally by 14 months postnatally. Housework time remained stable over the four time periods. Average total work hours for mothers with children prior to the birth of the sample child were about the same as for first-time mothers after the birth. Average time spent in child care increased for mothers with small children by 10 hours/week and leisure time and work time each decreased by 5 hours/week. Mothers with small children worked more hours than first-time mothers. Differences between mothers with small children and first-time mothers were greatest before the birth and at 14 months postnatally. Fathers did not increase their work time after the childs birth to compensate for mothers loss of work time. Fathers time spent on child care increased if there were other small children. Older daughters spent a significant amount of time on child care and the time spent complemented mothers time spent. Additional time spent in child care differed by household type. Economies of scale were affected by birth spacing.

Bargaining over family size: the determinants of fertility in Brazil.

Understanding how households make fertility decisions is important to implementing effective policy to slow population growth. Most empirical studies of this decision are based on household models in which men and women are assumed to act as if they have the same preferences for the number of children. However, if men and women have different preferences regarding fertility and are more likely to assert their own preferences as their bargaining power in the household increases, policies to lower fertility rates may be more effectively targeted toward one spouse or the other. In this paper, we test the relevance of the single preferences model by investigating whether men and womens nonwage incomes have the same effects on the number of children in the household. We find that while increases in both the man and womans nonwage income lower the number of children in the household, an equivalent increase in the womans income has a significantly stronger effect than the mans. In addition, we find that increases in womens nonwage transfer income have the strongest effects on the fertility decisions of women with low levels of education. The most important policy implication of our results is that policies aimed at increasing the incomes of the least-educated women will be the most effective in lowering fertility rates.

THE EMPLOYMENT EFFECTS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Domestic violence is a social ill that results in significant social costs. While the employment costs of domestic violence are obvious to victims and advocates for battered women, there is little research that examines the relationship between abuse and women’s employment opportunities. In this paper, we build on existing models of domestic violence by presenting a model that allows for a simultaneous relationship between women’s income and violence. The validity of the model is tested empirically using several different data sets. The results are mixed. While the empirical evidence supports the model’s assumption that violence has a negative impact on the labor market productivity of working women, it also indicates that being a battered woman does not significantly decrease the likelihood that a woman participates in the labor market. In fact, empirical results indicate that after controlling for the simultaneity of violence and work, battered women are more likely to work than women who are not abused. While women who are victims of intimate abuse most likely find it much harder to work outside the home, these negative effects may be offset by strong incentives to increase their economic independence by holding jobs.

Cheaper by the dozen? The marginal time costs of children in the Philippines

The important relationship between fertility rates and economic development has prompted many researchers to try and better understand the determinants of family size. It has repeatedly been shown that the costs of children, both direct and indirect, are one of the most important determinants of fertility, exerting a significantly negative effect on birth rates in both developed and developing countries. Many studies which investigate the relationship between the costs of children and family size have assumed that these costs do not vary with parity. However, there is substantial evidence that the marginal costs of children are not constant but decrease with birth order in developed countries. In this paper, the hypothesis that there are diminishing marginal time costs of children is tested using household data from the developing country setting of the Philippines. By examining the determinants of additional time spent in childcare before and after the birth of a child, it is found that the marginal time costs are not the same across households of various sizes. Firstborn children cost significantly more in terms of additional mothers time than children of higher birth orders. In addition, the time costs of the second child are found to be significantly greater than those of the third child. However, these economies of scale in childcare are limited and do not extend beyond three children. The effect of birth spacing on the marginal time costs of children is also found to be significant.

Conflict in divorce disputes: the determinants of pretrial settlement

Abstract As a result of the increasing divorce rate over the past decades and the growing burden on the U.S. court system, many states have stressed mediation as an alternative to a court judgment. What determines whether divorcing couples reach a bilateral settlement or resort to use of the courts? In this paper, we summarize the predictions from the theoretical literature on settlement failure and consider what these theories suggest in the application of divorce. The predictions of the models are empirically tested using the Stanford Child Custody Study. Estimation of the determinants of going to court indicates that none of the existing models on settlement failure adequately predict the determinants of using the courts. The results do, however, suggest that private information may play an important role in court usage. In addition, the results provide some interesting implications for policy-makers interested in decreasing the number of divorce cases that go to court. Attorney representation and the man’s income increase the likelihood of going to court while the woman’s education, the time lag between separation and divorce, and home ownership all decrease the likelihood of going to court.

Strategic Bargaining Over Child Support and Visitation

When parents divorce, child support and visitation must be determined. The 1988 Family Support Act requires all states to have child support guidelines for courts to use in determining child support obligations. However, many divorcing couples arrive at agreements without court intervention, or they simply fail to enforce the court decision ex post. Given that the guidelines provide a starting point for negotiations, couples may be able to find self-negotiated, Pareto-improving solutions. In this paper we model the bargaining process that divorcing couples engage in when coming to agreements on visitation and child support. The model suggests that individuals may arrive at agreements that are Pareto improvements for both parents but that the childrens welfare may decline as a result of these self-negotiated settlements. Data from the Stanford Child Custody Study show that the changes made in child support and visitation agreements are consistent with our model in only 30 percent of the cases. Therefore, we consider alternative specifications of the model and show that both significant costs of enforcing the original agreement and alternative assumptions on parental preferences can explain these empirical results.

Too Few Women? - Or Too Many Men? The Gender Imbalance in Undergraduate Economics

There is a gender imbalance in undergraduate economics departments with most departments educating a strong majority of young men. This imbalance has led many economists to ponder the question of why relatively few women choose to take courses and major in economics. Our hypothesis is that the gender imbalance in undergraduate economics, particularly at institutions with traditional liberal arts curriculums, is as much the result of too many men choosing economics as it is too few women. Students choose their majors based on both their interests and their abilities. The literature indicates that the grade a student receives in an introductory class relative to grades received in other departments is one of the strongest predictors of whether or not the student chooses to enroll in more courses in the discipline. However, our hypothesis is that men who take economics courses are less responsive to this signal than are women. As a result, men who do poorly in economics are more likely to continue in the major. Women who do poorly, in contrast, are more likely to abandon economics and pursue a different major. Our results, generated from 16 years of data from a liberal arts college where economics is one of the most popular majors, support this hypothesis. The overall economics GPA for female majors is significantly higher than that for males. In addition, histograms show that male students dominate the bottom of the grade distribution. Finally, results from estimation of a series of selection models of the decision to take more economics courses indicate that, holding other characteristics constant, women are more responsive to the relative grade received in the second semester of economics than are men.

Deviations from the Least-Cost Diets for Infants

This paper addresses an on-going controversy in the nutrition literature over the size and significance of the nutrient elasticity with respect to food expenditure. Linear programming methods are used to estimate the least-cost diets for infants in Cebu, Philippines. The results imply that, overall, the actual expenditure is greater than the least-cost expenditure. Data and regression analyses are used to explore the determinants of the deviations from the least-cost diets. The results support the hypotheses that the deviations increase with income due to the diminishing marginal utility of nutrients and that the deviations fall as the nutritional knowledge of the mother increases.