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GARY BECKER ON THE QUANTITY AND QUALITY OF CHILDREN

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2015

Matthias Doepke
Matthias Doepke*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Department of Economics, USA
*
Department of Economics, Northwestern University, 2001 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208 (e-mail: doepke@northwestern.edu).
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Extract

Before Gary Becker, fertility choice was widely considered to be outside the realm of economic analysis. Apart from intellectual tradition, one reason for this was that the data on fertility did not immediately suggest an economic mechanism. In industrialized countries, fertility had declined strongly over time, even though family incomes were rising. Similarly, in many studies using cross-sectional data the relationship between family income and fertility had been shown to be either flat or declining. To many observers, these observations suggested that the “taste” for children had waned over time and that high income families placed less value on childbearing than the poor.

Keywords

Gary BeckerFertilityQuantity-Quality ModelDemographic Transition
Type
Special Section: Essays in honor of Gary Becker
Information
Journal of Demographic Economics , Volume 81 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 59 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain 2015 

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