TY  - JOUR
AU  - Milligan,Kevin
TI  - Subsidizing the Stork: New Evidence on Tax Incentives and Fertility
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 8845
PY  - 2002
Y2  - March 2002
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8845
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8845.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Kevin S. Milligan
Department of Economics
University of British Columbia
#997-1873 East Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1
CANADA
Tel: 604/822-6747
Fax: 604/822-5915
E-Mail: kevin.milligan@ubc.ca
AB  - Variation in tax policy presents an opportunity to estimate the responsiveness of fertility to prices. This paper exploits the introduction of a pro-natalist transfer policy in the Canadian province of Quebec that paid up to C$8,000 to families having a child. I implement a quasi-experimental strategy by forming treatment and control groups defined by time, jurisdiction, and family type. This permits a triple-difference estimator to be implemented -- both on the program's introduction and cancellation. Furthermore, the incentive was available broadly, rather than to a narrow subset of the population as studied in the literature on AFDC and fertility. This provides a unique opportunity to investigate heterogeneous responses. I find a strong effect of the policy on fertility, and some evidence of a heterogeneous response that may help reconcile these results with the AFDC literature.
ER  -