Endogenous Child Mortality, the Price of Child-specific Goods and Fertility Decisions: Evidence from Argentina

Alessandro Cigno and Graciela Pinal

Chapter 14 in Latin American Economic Crises, 2004, pp 247-257 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract A theoretical paper, Cigno (1998), modelled fertility and infant mortality as the joint outcome of fertility and expenditure decisions under conditions of uncertainty as to the number of children who might survive to adulthood. The model predicted that if parents were aware that the amount of resources spent on each child improved that child’s chances of survival, then an increase in the observed (aggregate) survival rate might induce parents to spend more on each child born, and reduce the number of births. This implies that public expenditure on, say, sanitation or mass immunization might discourage births, and that its direct mortality-reducing effects may be reinforced by induced private action. However, if parents were not aware of the effects of their actions on the survival chances of their own offspring, all that is likely to be achieved by such a policy is an increase in the number of births. It is thus of some importance to establish empirically whether parents regard the survival chances of their own children as dependent on their actions or not.

Keywords: Infant Mortality; Child Mortality; Marginal Utility; Public Expenditure; Private Action (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:intecp:978-1-4039-4385-9_14

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DOI: 10.1057/9781403943859_14

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