Women's Empowerment, the Gender Gap in Desired Fertility, and Fertility Outcomes in Developing Countries

Matthias Doepke and Michele Tertilt

No 11262, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We document evidence on preferences for childbearing in developing countries. Across countries, men usually desire larger families than women do. Within countries, we find wide dispersion in spouses' desired fertility: there are many couples whose ideal family size differs by five children or more. This disagreement between spouses suggests that the extent to which women are empowered should matter for fertility choices. We point to evidence at both the macro and micro levels that this is indeed the case. We conclude that taking account of household bargaining and women's empowerment in analyses of fertility is an important challenge for research.

Keywords: desired fertility; women's empowerment; marital bargaining (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J13 J16 O10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2018-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-dev, nep-gen and nep-hme
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published - published in: AEA Papers and Proceedings, 2018, 108, 358–362

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp11262.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Women's Empowerment, the Gender Gap in Desired Fertility, and Fertility Outcomes in Developing Countries (2018)
Working Paper: Women's Empowerment, the Gender Gap in Desired Fertility, and Fertility Outcomes in Developing Countries (2018)
Working Paper: Women's Empowerment, the Gender Gap in Desired Fertility, and Fertility Outcomes in Developing Countries (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:iza:izadps:dp11262

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().