TY  - JOUR
AU  - Jones, Larry E
AU  - Schoonbroodt, Alice
AU  - Tertilt, Michèle
TI  - Fertility Theories:  Can They Explain the Negative Fertility-Income Relationship? 
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14266
PY  - 2008
Y2  - August 2008
DO  - 10.3386/w14266
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14266
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14266.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Larry E. Jones
Department of Economics
University of Minnesota
4-101 Hanson Hall
1925 Fourth Street South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Tel: 612/624-4553
Fax: 612/624-0209
E-Mail: lej@umn.edu

Alice Schoonbroodt
The University of Iowa
Tippie College of Business
Department of Economics
Pappajohn Business Builing
Iowa city
Iowa
E-Mail: alice-schoonbroodt@uiowa.edu

Michèle Tertilt
Department of Economics
University of Mannheim
L7, 3-5
68131 Mannheim
Germany
Tel: +49-621-181-1902
E-Mail: tertilt@uni-mannheim.de
M1  - published as Larry E. Jones, Alice Schoonbroodt, Michèle Tertilt. "Fertility Theories: Can They Explain the Negative Fertility-Income Relationship?," in John B. Shoven, editor, "Demography and the Economy" University of Chicago Press (2011)

AB  - In this chapter we revisit the relationship between income and fertility. There is overwhelming empirical evidence that fertility is negatively related to income in most countries at most times. Several theories have been proposed in the literature to explain this somewhat puzzling fact. The most common one is based on the opportunity cost of time being higher for individuals with higher earnings. Alternatively, people might differ in their desire to procreate and accordingly some people invest more in children and less in market-specific human capital and thus have lower earnings. We revisit these and other possible explanations. We find that these theories are not as robust as is commonly believed. That is, several special assumptions are needed to generate the negative relationship. Not all assumptions are equally plausible. Such findings will be useful to distinguish alternative theories. We conclude that further research along these lines is needed.
ER  -