Empirical analyses of household decision-making: Location choice, property values, and women's labor force participation

This dissertation contains three essays investigating the indirect effects of children on economic decisions and outcomes. The first two analyze school choice and education efficiency driven by households voting with their feet while the third focuses on child care costs and women's labor force participation. In the first essay I show how the monetary value parents place on school quality may be inferred from residential location choices. I implement the method with data from the U.S. Census for Washington, D.C. using residential location decisions in 1990. For whites I find school quality is an important determinant of residential choices and, households with children in the top income quintile are willing to pay ;The second essay utilizes a "market-based" approach to evaluate public school efficiency. Using data collected from state departments of education and taxation and the U.S. Censuses of Population and Governments for 1980 and 1990, the study examines the effect of changes in state aid for education on school district property values. Property values are expected to increase in states for which school districts on average spend money efficiently. From the subset of nine states analyzed, the results indicate that the majority of states are inefficient with only one state approximately efficient on average and one state under spending on average.;Finally, the third essay moves away from education and looks at the effect of child care cost on women's labor force participation following first-birth. Using the relatively detailed information available in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this paper explores women's decisions to return to work within one year of the birth of their first child, focusing particularly on the effect of child care costs. Consistent with economic theory, women who face lower child care costs are more likely to return to work after giving birth as are women with higher potential wages and lower family income from other sources.