The Baby Boom, Baby Busts, and Grandmothers

Cuneyt Orman (), Turkmen Goksel () and Mehmet Gurdal

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Studies in family economics and anthropology suggest that grandmothers are a highly valuable source of childcare assistance. As such, availability of grandmothers affects the cost of having children, and hence fertility decisions of young parents. In this paper, we develop a simple model to assess the fertility implications of the fluctuations in both output (as argued by demographers) and grandmother-availability induced child-care costs over the period 1920-1970. Model does a good job of mimicking the bust-boom-bust pattern during this period. When the child-care cost channel is shut down, the model’s performance weakens significantly; in particular, it fails to capture the bust in the 1960’s altogether.

Keywords: fertility; baby boom; baby bust; female labor-force participation; grandmother availability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 J20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cis and nep-dge
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