IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeborg/v220y2024icp838-849.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mother Africa: The long run effects of income shocks on fertility

Author

Listed:
  • Gradstein, Mark
  • Ishak, Phoebe W.

Abstract

We revisit the effect of long run income growth on population fertility in some of the poorest countries in the world. Causal inference is enabled through proxying income windfalls by oil price shocks in oil rich versus oil poor provinces. We find that long run income growth, following oil windfalls, significantly and robustly reduces fertility in oil producing provinces. To explain these results, we document that oil windfalls have translated to higher incomes in oil-producing provinces promoting parents to invest in the human capital of their children, in terms of acquiring more schooling and delaying girls’ age of marriage. Investing in women's education has persisted over the long-run causing a further delay in the age of first marriage and the giving of first birth.

Suggested Citation

  • Gradstein, Mark & Ishak, Phoebe W., 2024. "Mother Africa: The long run effects of income shocks on fertility," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 220(C), pages 838-849.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:220:y:2024:i:c:p:838-849
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2024.03.013
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268124001070
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jebo.2024.03.013?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic development; Population; Fertility; Income; Oil;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence

    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:eee:jeborg:v:220:y:2024:i:c:p:838-849. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jebo .

    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.