The Child Quantity–Quality Trade-off

Rufei Guo (), Junjian Yi and Junsen Zhang ()
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Rufei Guo: Wuhan University
Junsen Zhang: Zhejiang University

No 15233, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This chapter reviews the growing literature on the child quantity–quality (QQ) trade-off. During the transition from the traditional agricultural economy to modern economic growth, household real income increases, fertility decreases, and human capital investment per child increases. Motivated by this observation, economists started to develop theoretical models of the child QQ trade-off in the 1970s. Macroeconomic models that theoretically incorporate the QQ trade-off flourish. As a parallel development, empirical studies exploit multiple sources of exogenous variations in family size, such as twin births, child sex composition, and family planning policies, to identify the causal effect of fertility on child quality. Dialogues between theoretical and empirical analyses should empower future research on the child QQ trade-off.

Keywords: child human capital investment; fertility; demographic transition; child quantity-quality trade-off (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2022-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem and nep-gro
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - published in: Klaus F. Zimmermann (ed.), Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics, Springer, 2022

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