 Money, Time, and the Demand for ChildrenEvie Thompson and Guy Michaels No 22140, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research Abstract: US fertility has fallen well below replacement, even as stated fertility ideals have not. We ask how much money and time women are willing to trade off for additional children, a question that is difficult to answer using observational data or even natural experiments. We field a discrete choice experiment in which 1,995 women choose between hypothetical futures varying the number of additional children, household income, and time use. Demand falls with both income and time prices, and rises with income faster than proportionally, consistent with larger families being a luxury good. Exploratory results show that full-time work, but not part-time work, is perceived as costly, and that baseline demand varies considerably by age, religiosity, and desired fertility even as price responses vary less. Notably, women on average require compensation, often significant, to accept a second additional child, including many who say they want two more. This finding complicates the standard reading of a stated ideal of two children as evidence of unmet demand: once its price is held fixed, we find little demand to reach it. Keywords: Fertility; Gender; Discrete choice experiment; Time use; Willingness to pay (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:22140 Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from 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. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.