Fertility and Labor Market Responses to Reductions in Mortality

Sonia Bhalotra, Atheendar Venkataramani and Selma Walther

No 17255, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We investigate women’s fertility, labor and marriage market responses to large declines in child mortality. We find delayed childbearing, with lower intensive and extensive margin fertility, a decline in the chances of ever having married, increased labor force participation and an improvement in occupational status. This constitutes the first evidence that improvements in child survival allow women to start fertility later and invest more in the labor market. We present a new theory of fertility that incorporates dynamic choices and reconciles our findings with existing models of behavior.

Keywords: Women’s labor force participation; Fertility timing; Childlessness; Child mortality; Medical innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-04
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP17255 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Fertility and Labor Market Responses to Reductions in Mortality (2022)
Working Paper: Fertility and Labor Market Responses to Reductions in Mortality (2021)
Working Paper: Fertility and labor market responses to reductions in mortality (2018)
Working Paper: Fertility and Labor Market Responses to Reductions in Mortality (2018)
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:cpr:ceprdp:17255

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP17255

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().