Explaining International Fertility Differences
Abstract
Why do fertility rates vary so much across countries? Why are European fertility rates so much lower than American fertility rates? To answer these questions we extend the Barro-Becker framework to incorporate the decision to accumulate human capital (which determines earnings) and health capital (which determines life span). We find that cross-country differences in productivity and taxes go a long way toward explaining the observed differences in fertility and mortality. (c) 2009 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology..Download Info
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Article provided by MIT Press in its journal Quarterly Journal of Economics.
Volume (Year): 124 (2009)
Issue (Month): 2 (May)
Pages: 771-807
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