When having many children pays: a case study from Taiwan

Mun Lai ()

Journal of Population Economics, 2012, vol. 25, issue 1, 323-348

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to investigate the direct financial cost and benefit of raising children during a demographic transition in Taiwan, and to examine whether fertility decline is consistent with Caldwell’s wealth flow theory, which states that fertility decline is caused by reduced benefits of children. The paper describes a method of estimating the average economic returns of children over the entire parental lifecycle, using a 42-year span of Taiwanese household and individual economic pseudo-panel data. Results show that returns to children may turn positive and are not highly negative all the time, as found in the previous literature. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2012

Keywords: Cost and benefit of children; Fertility; Familial transfers; J13; D10; I2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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DOI: 10.1007/s00148-011-0373-9

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