American Economic Review Vol. 105 No. 6 2015

Fertility and Childlessness in the United States

Thomas Baudin¹; David de la Croix²; Paula E. Gobbi³

¹ Centre de Recherche en Démographie et Société, Bureau A-146, Université catholique de Louvain, 1, Place Montesquieu, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium (e-mail: ) · ² IRES, Université catholique de Louvain, Place Montesquieu 3, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, and CORE (e-mail: ) · ³ National Fund for Scientific Research (Belgium) and IRES, Université catholique de Louvain, Place Montesquieu 3, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium (e-mail: )

Abstract

We develop a theory of fertility, distinguishing its intensive margin from its extensive margin. The deep parameters are identified using facts from the 1990 US Census: (i) fertility of mothers decreases with education; (ii) childlessness exhibits a U-shaped relationship with education; (iii) the relationship between marriage rates and education is hump-shaped for women and increasing for men. We estimate that 2.5 percent of women were childless because of poverty and 8.1 percent because of high opportunity cost of childrearing. Over time, historical trends in total factor productivity and in education led to a U-shaped response in childlessness rates while fertility of mothers decreased.

DOI

10.1257/aer.20120926

Volume

105

Issue

6

Pages

1852-1882

Language

en

Sources

openalex bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref

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