Volume 30, Number 2 (Spring) 1995
Bingley, Paul, Gauthier Lanot, Elizabeth Symons, and Ian Walker. 1995. "Child Support Reform and the Labor Supply of United Kingdom Lone Mothers." Journal of Human Resources 30(2):256-279.
The reform of child support arrangements, including their treatment by the welfare system, has been on the policy agenda in a number of countries in recent years. This paper simulates the impact of a reform that recently has been implemented in the United Kingdom. The analysis is based on estimates of a model of discrete choice labor supply for a sample of U.K. lone mothers. We suggest that reform will induce a major reduction in welfare expenditures on lone mothers and a significant rise in their labor force participation due to greater work incentives associated with the changes.
Paul Bingley is a research assistant at Keele University in the United Kingdom. Gauthier Lanot and Elizabeth Symons are lecturers at Keele University. Elizabeth Symons is also a research associate of the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London. Ian Walker is a professor of economics at Keele University and a research fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. We are grateful to the U.K. Central Statistical Office for allowing us access to the Family Expenditure Survey data, to Steven Webb of the IFS for assistance with extracting the data on lone parents and for helping us to understand the intricacies of the U.K. tax/benefit system, to the European Union's Stimulation Programme for Economic Science grant E90100010, and to the U.K. Economics and Social Research Council (ESRC) for financial assistance under grant R000232160. Valuable comments were received from Andrew Rees, Nina Smith, Niels Westergard-Nielsen, Richard Blundell, Stephen Jenkins, Costas Meghir, François Laisney, Jonathan Bradshaw, and Gerry Makepeace. The authors are also indebted to four JHR referees for their perceptive comments. The data used in this study can be made available to other researchers, subject to them gaining approval from the ESRC Data Archive. Contact Ian Walker at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, 7 Ridgmount Street, London WC1E 7AE, United Kingdom.
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