Economies of scale, gender discrimination, and cost of children

Abstract

New empirical evidence is provided on the measurement of the cost of a child with emphasis on the issue of household economies of scale and gender bias. Most empirical results suggest the plausible conclusion that there are household economies of scale in rearing children. By using the utility-based approach with considering the gender discrimination, the present results show that there are diseconomies of scale in rearing a male child after having any female child within the household. This indicates a significant gender bias issue in intra-household allocation in Taiwan.