Becker曾在他的「人力資本」一書當中，說明人力資本的投資可藉由教育、技職訓練、維持個人健康等的方式進行，且這方面的投資行為與家庭有著重大的關聯，往往在小家庭中父母會希望多加栽培自己的子女，但若是增加孩子的人力資本投資，便有可能會排擠到家庭的生育率。然而，以台灣現況來說正是一個教育程度偏高且多為小家庭組成的國家，雖說人力資本的提高對高科技產業的發展有所助益，取而代之的卻是出生率的降低，這將會引發台灣社會與經濟發展的種種問題。 故本文係利用2012-2016年行政院提供之「家庭收支調查」，探討家庭對子女的投資支出在父母不同特徵之下的差異，但與其他相關論文不同的是，本文使用Heckman所提之方法修正樣本自我選擇問題並進行分析，且比較孩子在不同的年齡層之間的投資支出是否有所差異，以及針對一子與二子核心家庭分別做出支出的預測，藉此了解投資支出是否存在規模經濟的效果。研究結果發現，在孩子的各個時期，所得皆是影響支出的主要因素之一；父母教育程度越是高的家庭也會使孩子的投資支出增加，但當孩子為國中以前媽媽的影響較爸爸大；媽媽若有工作，則教育與保母支出會明顯的增加；最後由各項支出的估計值可知，多扶養一名子女其投資支出確實會有遞減的效果，應證了孩子的人力資本投資支出具有規模經濟的現象。 ;As Becker indicated in “Human Capital”, schooling, training courses and even expenditures on medical care were the ways to invest in human capital. Parents have a large influence on their children’s lives, especially children’s human capital growth. Small families generally spend a lot on children’s education, including Japanese, Jews, and Cubans. Becker also mentioned that the number of children and spending per child tended to be negatively related. However, Taiwan is currently faced with a serious problem of the low birth rate, and it could initiate some negative effects on economic and social development. In this paper, we examine how family and parental characteristics changed the spending of the education, social cultural and child care during the five periods of children’s lives by using data from 2012 to 2016, the Survey of Family Income and Expenditure. Considering there is a potential of sample selection, we control the self-selection bias via Heckman’s model. In conclusion, family income plays a vital role during every period of children’s lives; the higher of parental education level, the more money investing in children’s human capital; if the mother has a job, the spending on education and child care will increase noticeably; this paper also focuses on the issue that if the economies of scale exists in investment in children’s human capital. By estimating the predicted value, we found that expenditures of an additional child will be certainly lower than one child family.
