An Econometric Analysis of the Old-Age Security Motive for Childbearing

Eric Jensen

International Economic Review, 1990, vol. 31, issue 4, 953-68

Abstract: A switching regression for birth interval lengths with endogenous switching is developed to test Mead Cain's contention that parents' fertility decisions arise from lexicographic preferences for old-age security. The model is estimated as a survival model using Malaysian data. Assuming that contraceptors constitute the group of parents who have attained the minimal number of children with which they feel their old-age support is secure, strong support for Cain's concept of old-age security as the principal interest of those parents who have not yet attained a sufficient number of children appears in these data. Copyright 1990 by Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania and the Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association.

Date: 1990
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