Child Endowments and the Quantity and Quality of Children

Becker, Gary S.; Tomes, Nigel

doi:10.1086/260536

Cited by 970 publications

(188 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

145

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…To the extent that children provide old-age support to their parents, a decline in fertility may spur savings for old age and retirement. The decline in fertility may also have beneficial effects though allowing greater investment in child health and education as predicted by the quantity-quality tradeoff models (Becker and Tomes 1976;Becker 1965). These mechanisms suggest that the overall effect of a fertility decline on income levels may be even larger than we report.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 54%

Fertility, female labor force participation, and the demographic dividend

et al. 2009

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We estimate the effect of fertility on female labor force participation in a panel of countries using abortion legislation as an instrument for fertility. We find that removing legal restrictions on abortion significantly reduces fertility and estimate that, on average, a birth reduces a woman's labor supply by almost 2 years during her reproductive life. Our results imply that behavioral change, in the form of increased female labor supply, contributes significantly to economic growth during the demographic transition when fertility declines.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 54%

Fertility, female labor force participation, and the demographic dividend

et al. 2009

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Demographic arguments in development have often argued that lower fertility rates encourage investment in children and subsequent productivity growth (Szreter 1996;Becker and Tomes 1976). Many of these arguments have suggested that fertility declines have led to large productivity gains and industrial revolutions.…”

Section: Substantive Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intergenerational transfers and European families: Does the number of siblings matter?

Emery¹

2013

DemRes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…In the wealth maximization model of parental investment first formally articulated by Becker and Tomes (1976), parents allocate child-specific parental investment in a manner that reinforces specific endowments. Siblings with higher specific endowments receive greater levels of parental investment since the marginal return to a given level of parental investment is thought to be higher for better endowed children.…”

Section: An Empirical Model Of Birth Weight and Later Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 99%