Working Paper Series,
IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy

Abstract: We exploit a sharp birthday discontinuity in a large and universal Swedish cash transfer program, creating plausibly exogenous variation in the default disbursement option, while holding entitlements and other financial incentives constant. When the cash transfer is paid out to the mother by default, instead of a 50/50 default, it has a huge effect on the probability that the transfer is deposited in the mother’s bank account also in the long run. Surprisingly, we find that the default policy redistributes resources to separated low-income mothers. We find no indications that the 100%-to-the-mother default induces mothers to work less or to take more responsibility for the children.

Keywords: Gender targeting; family transfers; default; child allowance; gender equality

JEL-codes: D91; H31; J12

Language: English

49 pages, March 9, 2023

Full text files

wp-2023-4-gender-tar...reform-in-sweden.pdf  Full text

Download statistics

• IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy
• Ordering Working Papers
• Home page for this series

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Ali Ghooloo ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().

RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2023_004This page generated on 2024-09-13 22:15:20.