Gender differences in education in a dynamic household bargaining model

In this paper, we explore the issue of gender differences in education in the context of a two-sexoverlapping generations model where men and women of each generation bargain over consumption, number of children, and investment in education of their children conditional on gender, andparents are altruistic toward their children. We show that the difference in the education levels ofboys and girls implied by our model is smaller than the one that would result from a pureinvestment model. Also, we show that as long as the time cost associated with bearing childrenis positive, women bear the entire time cost associated with child rearing. We use our model toestimate the cost to a woman of having a child. The estimate we obtain using cross-country datasuggests that such cost amounts to about 5% of the working lifetime of a woman.