IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/4550.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Gender Gap, Fertility, and Growth

Author

Listed:
  • Oded Galor
  • David N. Weil

Abstract

This paper examines a novel mechanism linking fertility and growth. Household fertility is determined by relative wages of women and men. Increasing women's wages reduces fertility by raising the cost of children relatively more than household income. Lower fertility raises the level of capital per worker which in turn, since capital is more complementary to women's labor input than men's, raises women's relative wages. This positive feedback leads to the possibility of multiple steady-state equilibria. Countries with low initial capital may converge to a development trap with high fertility, low capital, and low relative wages for women.

Suggested Citation

  • Oded Galor & David N. Weil, 1993. "The Gender Gap, Fertility, and Growth," NBER Working Papers 4550, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4550
    Note: EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w4550.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Galor, Oded & Ryder, Harl E., 1989. "Existence, uniqueness, and stability of equilibrium in an overlapping-generations model with productive capital," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 360-375, December.
    2. Birdsall, Nancy, 1988. "Economic approaches to population growth," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Hollis Chenery & T.N. Srinivasan (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 12, pages 477-542, Elsevier.
    3. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence Kahn, 1995. "The Gender Earnings Gap: Some International Evidence," NBER Chapters, in: Differences and Changes in Wage Structures, pages 105-144, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Robert J. Barro, 1991. "Economic Growth in a Cross Section of Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(2), pages 407-443.
    5. Becker, Gary S, 1985. "Human Capital, Effort, and the Sexual Division of Labor," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(1), pages 33-58, January.
    6. Gary S. Becker & Kevin M. Murphy & Robert Tamura, 1994. "Human Capital, Fertility, and Economic Growth," NBER Chapters, in: Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education, Third Edition, pages 323-350, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Jacob Mincer, 1991. "Human Capital, Technology, and the Wage Structure: What Do Time Series Show?," NBER Working Papers 3581, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Heckman, James J & Walker, James R, 1990. "The Relationship between Wages and Income and the Timing and Spacing of Births: Evidence from Swedish Longitudinal Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(6), pages 1411-1441, November.
    9. Gary S. Becker & Robert J. Barro, 1988. "A Reformulation of the Economic Theory of Fertility," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 103(1), pages 1-25.
    10. N. Gregory Mankiw & David Romer & David N. Weil, 1992. "A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(2), pages 407-437.
    11. Gary S. Becker, 1960. "An Economic Analysis of Fertility," NBER Chapters, in: Demographic and Economic Change in Developed Countries, pages 209-240, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Hollis Chenery† & T.N. Srinivasan (ed.), 1988. "Handbook of Development Economics," Handbook of Development Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    13. Zvi Griliches, 1970. "Notes on the Role of Education in Production Functions and Growth Accounting," NBER Chapters, in: Education, Income, and Human Capital, pages 71-127, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Goldin, Claudia, 1992. "Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195072709.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Do, Quy-Toan & Levchenko, Andrei A. & Raddatz, Claudio, 2016. "Comparative advantage, international trade, and fertility," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 48-66.
    2. Sunha Myong & JungJae Park & Junjian Yi, 2021. "Social Norms and Fertility," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(5), pages 2429-2466.
    3. Murat F. Iyigun, 1995. "Human capital accumulation, fertility and growth: a re-analysis," International Finance Discussion Papers 523, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    4. Iyigun, Murat F., 2000. "Timing of childbearing and economic growth," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 255-269, February.
    5. Dierk Herzer & Holger Strulik & Sebastian Vollmer, 2012. "The long-run determinants of fertility: one century of demographic change 1900–1999," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 17(4), pages 357-385, December.
    6. Frederic Tournemaine & Pongsak Luangaram, 2012. "R&D, human capital, fertility, and growth," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 25(3), pages 923-953, July.
    7. Sylwia Zajączkowska-Jakimiak, 2006. "Wiedza techniczna i kapitał ludzki w teorii wzrostu gospodarczego," Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, issue 11-12, pages 47-69.
    8. Quamrul H. Ashraf & David N. Weil & Joshua Wilde, 2013. "The Effect of Fertility Reduction on Economic Growth," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 39(1), pages 97-130, March.
    9. Waliu Olawale Shittu & Norehan Abdullah & Habiba Muhammed Bello Umar, 2019. "Does Fertility Affect Female Labour Participation Differently in Malaysia and Singapore?," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 62(2), pages 201-217, June.
    10. Oded Galor, 2012. "The demographic transition: causes and consequences," Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History, Association Française de Cliométrie (AFC), vol. 6(1), pages 1-28, January.
    11. Miranda, Alfonso & Trivedi, Pravin K., 2020. "Econometric Models of Fertility," IZA Discussion Papers 13357, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Larry E. Jones & Alice Schoonbroodt & Michèle Tertilt, 2010. "Fertility Theories: Can They Explain the Negative Fertility-Income Relationship?," NBER Chapters, in: Demography and the Economy, pages 43-100, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Solomon W. Polachek & Jun Xiang, 2009. "The Gender Pay Gap across Countries: A Human Capital Approach," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 227, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    14. Esa Mangeloja, 2004. "Economic Growth and Religious Production Efficiency," DEGIT Conference Papers c009_040, DEGIT, Dynamics, Economic Growth, and International Trade.
    15. Elwin Tobing, 2012. "Demography and cross-country differences in savings rates: a new approach and evidence," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 25(3), pages 963-987, July.
    16. David E. Bloom & David Canning & Pia N. Malaney, 1999. "Demographic Change and Economic Growth in Asia," CID Working Papers 15, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    17. Luciano Fanti & Luca Gori, 2012. "Public Expenditure on Health and Private Old-Age Insurance in an OLG Growth Model with Endogenous Fertility: Chaotic Dynamics Under Perfect Foresight," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 40(4), pages 333-353, December.
    18. Robinson, James A. & Srinivasan, T.N., 1993. "Long-term consequences of population growth: Technological change, natural resources, and the environment," Handbook of Population and Family Economics, in: M. R. Rosenzweig & Stark, O. (ed.), Handbook of Population and Family Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 21, pages 1175-1298, Elsevier.
    19. Azariadis, Costas, 1996. "The Economics of Poverty Traps: Part One: Complete Markets," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 1(4), pages 449-496, December.
    20. Quamrul H. Ashraf & David N. Weil & Joshua Wilde, 2011. "The Effect of Fertility Reduction on Economic Growth," Department of Economics Working Papers 2013-11, Department of Economics, Williams College, revised Feb 2013.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4550. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.