Holding the Pencil or Buying Paint: Parental Childcare Versus Children’s Need for Extra Income. The Case of Belgium, Denmark and Spain

This article addresses the influence of child characteristics on couples’ decision-making regarding employment and parental childcare. Through simultaneous equation modeling we are able to separate earnings from care motives in this decision-making process. An empirical exercise on Belgian data illustrates how the earnings motive counteracts the care motive and causes a rise in the probability of a full-time job following an increase of the number of children. However, replication on Danish and Spanish data also suggests that a country’s incentive framework provides important limits to couples’ decision-making. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2005