Brown parents, green dads: Gender, children, and environmental taxes

This work aims to establish whether gender and having children affect the ecological preferences of people. In particular, the individual's willingness to spend money on improving the environment is considered. Using data for 51 countries taken from the World Value Survey, this paper shows that women are in general more prone to spending money for ecological purposes, although fathers are more willing to pay than mothers are. Parents are instead less willing to spend for the environment. As the number of children increases, fathers become more and more prone than mothers to spend for the environment, although the overall gender effect (i.e. women are more disposed to spend than men) is never reversed. The estimation uses interaction variables and country-specific controls to isolate the variables of interest as much as possible. In particular, both the effect of parenting and that of the number of children are inquired through IV and Heckman-selection estimation.