More than an Urban Legend: The long-term socioeconomic effects of unplanned fertility shocks

Thiemo Fetzer, Oliver Pardo and Amar Shanghavi
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Amar Shanghavi: London School of Economics

CAGE Online Working Paper Series from Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE)

Abstract: This paper exploits a nearly year-long period of power rationing that took place in Colombia in 1992, to shed light on three interrelated questions. First, we show that power shortages can lead to higher fertility, causing mini baby booms. Second, we show that the increase in fertility had not been offset by having fewer children over the following 12 years. Third, we show that the fertility shock caused mothers worse socioeconomic outcomes 12 years later. Taken together, the results suggest that there are significant indirect social costs to poor public infrastructure.

Keywords: fertility; infrastructure; blackouts; unplanned parenthood. JEL Classification: J13; J16; O18; H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-gro, nep-lab and nep-ure
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http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/resear ... /284-2016_fetzer.pdf

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cge:wacage:284

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