01 Bargain et al_ESRI Vol 41

We apply an extension of the Rothbarth approach to estimate the share of household resources accruing to children (i.e., the cost of children) in Ireland. The method also allows us to identify the economies of scale in the household and indifference scales in Lewbel (2003)’s sense. A practical aspect of the present approach is that it does not require price variation. The identification of the children’s share requires the observation of adult-specific goods as in the traditional Rothbarth method. We compare our findings to previous results for Ireland. 1 The authors dedicate this paper to the memory of Dr Eoghan Garvey. *Acknowledgements: Olivier Bargain is affiliated to University College Dublin, IZA, the Geary Institute, the ESRI and CHILD. Olivier Donni is affiliated to the Université Cergy-Pontoise, THEMA and IZA. Monnet Gbakou was affiliated to the Geary Institute when this paper was written. We thank Martin Browning for useful comments. We also thank participants to seminars at IZA (Bonn), BETA (Strasbourg), CEPS-INSTEAD (Luxembourg), Combat Poverty Agency (Dublin), CORE (Louvain-la-Neuve) and THEMA (Cergy-Pontoise). We are very grateful to ANR08-FASH-18 and the Combat Poverty Agency, Dublin, for financial support. All errors or omissions remain ours. Corres pondence: Olivier Bargain, UCD, Belfield, Dublin, Ireland. Phone: +353-17168357. E-mail: [email protected] Paper delivered at the Twenty-Third Annual Conference of the Irish Economic Association, Blarney, Co. Cork, 2009. 01 Bargain et al_ESRI Vol 41 25/02/2010 14:31 Page 1