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Household Behaviour, Equivalence Scales, Welfare and Poverty pp 55–74Cite as

An “Endogenous Dummy Variable” Estimator of Women’s Opportunity Costs of Children in Italy

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Part of the book series: Contributions to Statistics ((CONTRIB.STAT.))

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to determine the opportunity cost of children for Italian women as the present value of the difference between theoretical and actual earnings, the former estimated as counterfactuals (what if the woman had had no children?). Using the Bank of Italy data set of Italian households, we estimate work earnings and the probability of labour force participation. Differential analysis carried out relating to various professional categories shows that the opportunity cost of children increases with the level of education and decreases with age and experience.

The present work has benefited from financial support of the MURST National Research Projects, 1999 and 2000. We thank Luigi Cannari, Michele Costa, Camilo Dagum and Gustavo De Santis for their valuable suggestions, but accept full responsibility for the contents of this article.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Analisi Geopolitica del Territorio — Università di Messina, Via T. Cannizzaro, 278, Messina, Italy

    Antonino Di Pino & Massimo Mucciardi

Authors
  1. Antonino Di Pino
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  2. Massimo Mucciardi
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Scienze Statistiche “P. Fortunati”, Università di Bologna, Via Belle Arti, 41, 40126, Bologna, Italy

    Camilo Dagum

  2. Dipartimento di Statistica “G. Parenti”, Università di Firenze, Viale Morgagni, 59, 50134, Firenze, Italy

    Guido Ferrari

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Di Pino, A., Mucciardi, M. (2004). An “Endogenous Dummy Variable” Estimator of Women’s Opportunity Costs of Children in Italy. In: Dagum, C., Ferrari, G. (eds) Household Behaviour, Equivalence Scales, Welfare and Poverty. Contributions to Statistics. Physica, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7908-2681-4_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7908-2681-4_4

  • Publisher Name: Physica, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-7908-0108-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-7908-2681-4

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