There is an inverse association between income per adult and fertility among countries, and across households this inverse association is also often observed. Many studies find fertility is lower among better educated women and is often higher among women whose families own more land and assets. What do we know about the social consequences of events and policies that change fertility, if they are independent of parent preferences for children or the economic conditions which account for much of the variation in parent lifetime fertility? These effects of exogenous fertility change on the health and welfare of children can are assessed from Kenyan household survey data by analysis of the consequences of twins, and the effect of avoiding unanticipated fertility appears to have a larger beneficial effect on the body mass index or health status of children in the family than would be expected due to variation in fertility which is accounted for by parent education and household land.
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Paper provided by Economic Growth Center, Yale University in its series Working Papers with number
925.
Find related papers by JEL classification: J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Production
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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.:
Theodore W. Schultz, 1974.
"Fertility and Economic Values,"
NBER Chapters,
in: Economics of the Family: Marriage, Children, and Human Capital, pages 3-22
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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