Research

Abstract: The economic analysis of fertility focuses on the average number of children per woman. Male fertility and childlessness (never having a child) remain underexplored. In this paper, we start by documenting a novel fact: in France, while childlessness used to be similar for men and women, around 13%, the fraction has increased substantially for men, reaching 21% in the most recent cohort, but not for women. We then investigate whether the emergence of serial monogamy (divorces and remarriages) can explain this trend. We develop a dynamic matching model of the marriage market with transferable utility, endogenous divorce, and remarriage. We show that an exogenous reduction in the cost of divorce can exacerbate the gender gap in childlessness under two conditions: (1) female fertility declines with age and (2) matching preferences are characterized by age hypergamy. When these conditions hold, a higher divorce rate intensifies competition faced by young men, making it harder for them to find a partner of reproductive age, while expanding options for young women. We run numerical simulations to illustrate this mechanism, finding similar results whether agents are myopic or forward-looking. The next step is to estimate the model using French administrative data and conduct counterfactual analyses to quantify the effect of serial monogamy on childlessness.

Abstract: Life expectancy disparities by gender and income are well-documented, but the intersection of these variables remains underexplored. Moreover, cross-country comparison of the life expectancy income gradient is plagued with difficulties. This paper addresses those gaps by comparing the gender difference in the relationship between life expectancy and income in a harmonised framework across five high-income Western countries (Canada, France, Germany, England, and Sweden) from 2012 to 2019. We find that the life expectancy income gradient for men is steeper than for women when ranked by gross individual income quintile in all countries. This gender difference is reduced but persists in all countries when using household disposable income quintile: men gain 46% more life expectancy than women per income quintile increase.

Abstract: Earning subsidies or in-work benefit programs have become a defining feature of OECD countries’ tax and transfer programs. This note presents novel results on the efficiency-enhancing potential of reforms involving earning subsidies with a focus on the Prime d’Activité. We show that a test function can be used to identify potential inefficiencies of a given tax and transfer system. These inefficiencies can be addressed by reforms using earning subsidies. This approach also makes it possible to evaluate whether an implemented reform was self-financing. We apply these results to the French tax and transfer system in 2018, taking the case of single people with one child as an illustration. This reform was part of a 10-billion-euro plan to improve the economic well-being of the working poor and the middle class, presented in December 2018 by President Macron in response to the Yellow Vests movement. We show two main results. First, some inefficiencies were present before the 2019 reform. Second, the 2019 reform was not self-financing: implementing a self-financed reform would have required focusing on a narrower income range than the one chosen in 2019, but the reform pursued other objectives. The methodology introduced in this policy brief could be applied to other situations, which could help assess whether there are still inefficiencies in the current tax and transfer system. This is notably the work that is underway in Germany, with a report presented to the Ministry of Labor at the end of 2023 as part of coalition agreements aimed at reforming subsidies for low-income households.