Parental Expenditures of Time and Money on Children in the U.S.
利用2017和2019年收入动态面板研究数据，将父母时间价值纳入儿童总支出估算，发现替代性高且支出水平高于美国农业部标准，挑战了现行儿童抚养费与贫困测量方法。
Abstract How much do parents spend on children in the U.S.? While the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) regularly addresses this question, it considers only money expenditures, omitting the sizeable monetary value of parental time. The 2017 and 2019 Panel Study of Income Dynamics offers a unique opportunity to provide a more complete picture. Analysis of this data reveals considerable substitutability between unpaid and paid childcare and generates estimates of average total expenditures that include a replacement cost estimate of the value of parental time. These estimates, constructed for comparability with USDA measures, reveal both higher levels of average parental expenditure and different patterns across household structure and income. These findings challenge public policies that use USDA estimates as a reference point for setting the child support obligations of non‐custodial parents and reimbursement rates for foster care. They also undermine many conventional equivalence scales and measures of income/time poverty.