The Long-run Determinants of Fertility: One Century of Demographic Change 1900-1999

Dierk Herzer, Holger Strulik and Sebastian Vollmer

PGDA Working Papers from Program on the Global Demography of Aging

Abstract: We examine the long-run relationship between fertility, mortality, and income using panel cointegration techniques and the available data for the last century. Our main result is that mortality changes and growth of income per capita account for a major part of the fertility change characterizing the demographic transition. The fertility reduction triggered by falling mortality, however, is not enough to overcompensate the positive effect of falling mortality on population growth. This means that growth of income per capita is essential to explain the observed secular decline of population growth. These results are robust against alternative estimation methods, potential outliers, sample selection, di erent measures of mortality, and the sample period. In addition, our causality tests suggest that fertility changes are both cause and consequence of economic development.

Keywords: fertility; mortality; economic development; panel cointegration.; fertility; demographic change; mortality; income (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-his
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The long-run determinants of fertility: one century of demographic change 1900–1999 (2012)
Working Paper: The Long-run Determinants of Fertility: One Century of Demographic Change 1900-1999 (2010)
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