Baby commodity booms? The impact of commodity shocks on fertility decisions and outcomes

Francisco Gallego and Jeanne Lafortune

Journal of Population Economics, 2023, vol. 36, issue 1, No 11, 295-320

Abstract: Abstract This paper uses international commodity prices and local natural resource endowments as a source of plausibly exogenous variation in local Chilean economic conditions to study how these shocks impact fertility behavior of families in a small, emerging open economy where non-marital fertility is common but parental obligations are not well enforced. We find that these commodity shocks lead to an increase in the number of births and the birth rate. We argue that these results are consistent with most women experiencing an income effect and a limited substitution effect from commodity booms. This is confirmed by looking at groups that would have experienced a larger income than substitution effect: higher-order births, births within marital relationships, and those by mothers who do not experience an increase in their employment probability respond more strongly to these commodity booms.

Keywords: Fertility; Commodity booms; Cyclicality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J11 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00148-021-00855-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
Working Paper: Baby Commodity-Booms?: The Impact of Commodity Shocks on Fertility Decisions and Outcomes (2019)
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:spr:jopoec:v:36:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1007_s00148-021-00855-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... tion/journal/148/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00148-021-00855-0

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Population Economics is currently edited by K.F. Zimmermann

More articles in Journal of Population Economics from Springer, European Society for Population Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().