Parental bargaining and child health: a theoretical note

We attempt to determine how parental bargaining impacts the allocation of the family budget on child health. We developed a standard utility maximization problem for a representative family using a Cobb–Douglas utility function. We find that the child health is not affected by the bargaining power of the parents and their individual preferences. Rather, parental income and the output elasticity of child health input increases child health. The theoretical findings observed in the study are corroborated by suitable empirical findings.