Measuring the costs of children: an alternative approach.

摘要: Abstract The ‘cost of a child’ or, the general equivalence scale as it is more commonly known, concept considerable importance in matters relating to public policy and welfare. It has played crucial part numerous theoretical empirical studies poverty, income distribution, dietary needs, maintenance programs, supplementary child benefits other forms social security payments welfare state, assessing horizontal equity taxation. In spite long tradition estimating from observed household budget data, there remain severe problems estimation interpretation scales. This paper proposes new methodology for calculating using framework which consistent with utility theory overcomes identification problem without having enforce arbitrary prior assumptions recent studies. proposed method allows easy calculation not only basic ‘scale’ parameter but also how varies price reference utility. We illustrate usefulness procedure by on U.K. data at two different levels aggregation employing sets quite functional forms. results are plausible, compare favourably one another and, hence, confirm robustness procedure.