Distributive Implications of Fertility Changes in Latin America

Nicolas Badaracco, Leonardo Gasparini and Mariana Marchionni
Additional contact information
Nicolas Badaracco: CEDLAS - UNLP

CEDLAS, Working Papers from CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata

Abstract: Fertility rates significantly fell over the last decades in Latin America. In order to assess the extent to which these changes contributed to the observed reduction in income poverty and inequality we apply microeconometric decompositions to microdata from national household surveys from seven Latin American countries. We find that changes in fertility rates were associated to a non-negligible reduction in inequality and poverty in the region. The main channel was straightforward: lower fertility implied smaller families and hence larger per capita incomes. Lower fertility also fostered labor force participation, especially among women, which contributed to the reduction of poverty and inequality in most countries, although the size of this effect was smaller.

JEL-codes: J1 J2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2017-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-lam and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://cedlas.econo.unlp.edu.ar/archivos_upload/doc_cedlas206.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dls:wpaper:0206

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEDLAS, Working Papers from CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ana Pacheco ().