American Economic Review Vol. 104 No. 11 2014

Fertility Transitions Along the Extensive and Intensive Margins

Daniel Aaronson¹; Fabian Lange²; Bhashkar Mazumder¹

¹ Research Department, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 230 S. La Salle Street, Chicago, IL 60604 (e-mail: ) · ² Department of Economics, McGill University, 855 Sherbrooke Street West, Room 511 Leacock Building, Montreal, Quebec H3A 2T7 (e-mail: )

Abstract

By allowing for an extensive margin in the standard quantity-quality model, we generate new insights into fertility transitions. We test the model on Southern black women affected by a large-scale school construction program. Consistent with our model, women facing improved schooling opportunities for their children were more likely to have at least one child but chose to have smaller families overall. By contrast, women who themselves obtained more schooling due to the program delayed childbearing along both the extensive and intensive margins and entered higher quality occupations, consistent with education raising opportunity costs of child rearing.

DOI

10.1257/aer.104.11.3701

Volume

104

Issue

11

Pages

3701-3724

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref openalex

Cite

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