Bargaining over babies

There are new results from Matthias Doepke and Fabian Kindermann, here is the upshot:

A policy that lowers the child care burden specifically on mothers can be more than twice as effective at increasing the fertility rate compared to a general child subsidy.

The most likely implication is that a lot of the fathers don’t help out with child care very much, and they don’t much mind the greater burden being borne by their wives.