What caused the baby boom? And can it be explained within the context of the secular decline in fertility that has occurred over the last 200 years? The hypothesis is that:(a) The secular decline in fertility is due to the relentless rise in real wages that increased the opportunity cost of having children;(b) The baby boom is explained by an atypical burst of technological progress in the household sector that occurred in the middle of the last century. This lowered the cost of having children.A model is developed in an attempt to account, quantitatively, for both the baby boom and bust.
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Volume (Year): 95 (2005) Issue (Month): 1 (March) Pages: 183-207 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Gary S. Becker & James S. Duesenberry & Bernard Okun, 1960.
"An Economic Analysis of Fertility,"
NBER Chapters,
in: Demographic and Economic Change in Developed Countries, pages 225-256
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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