Family Labor Supply, Taxation and Saving in an Imperfect Capital Market

Abstract

This paper combines income and expenditure with time use data to provide a unique picture of the labour supplies, household production, saving and consumption decisions of two-adult households over a life cycle defined in terms of the presence and ages of children. The study also draws on data for household borrowing and lending, direct and indirect benefits and taxes to calibrate a "family life cycle" model, at the core of which is the hypothesis that households face a borrowing interest rate that rises with the amount of non-collateral based borrowing. The household members jointly choose time paths of time use, consumption and saving over their life cycle in the face of this capital market imperfection. Importantly, households are shown to differ significantly in their saving behavior in a way that depends on secondary earner labor supply, with a strong positive association between saving and the income of the second earner. The results differ sharply from those of the existing literature.

Keywords: life cycle, female labour supply, taxation, saving, time allocation, household production, child care, imperfect capital market

JEL Classification: D13, D91, H31, J2, K10, K30, K34