Three-years in expectation: the effect of “maternity capital” policy on housing and education expenditures

Abstract

This paper assesses the effectiveness of the “maternity capital” subsidy by estimating the changes in consumption patterns of families with two children in the Russian Federation between 2000-2016. The main focus is on the housing and education expenditures as they represent two main ways of current usage of the subsidy. The research covers four different time periods of families with two children, which are expenditures in the first year after the second child’s birth and the three consecutive years. I found that the subsidy decreases the housing expenditures by 18.4 percent and increases the education expenditure by 63 percent at the year of the second child’s birth using the Difference-in-Difference method.