IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ctl/louvir/2024006.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Fertility and Family Type in the United States: a Historical Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Luca Pensieroso

    (UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES))

  • Alessandro Sommacal

    (University of Verona)

  • Gaia Spolverini

    (UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES))

Abstract

We provide a historical decomposition of fertility in the United States by family type. We find that intergenerational coresidence was systematically associated with lower fertility than nuclear families, with the difference shrinking over time. This pattern is robust to controlling for several demographic and socioeconomic confounders. We build a simple, analytical model and show that a theory featuring both endogenous fertility and endogenous coresidence can rationalise the observed cross-family fertility difference. Simulations from a calibrated dynamic general equilibrium version of the model show that the model has the right qualitative behaviour, and is quantitatively meaningful. Using individual data, we discuss (and dismiss) several potential alternative explanations.

Suggested Citation

  • Luca Pensieroso & Alessandro Sommacal & Gaia Spolverini, 2024. "Fertility and Family Type in the United States: a Historical Analysis," LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES 2024006, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    • Handle: RePEc:ctl:louvir:2024006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://sites.uclouvain.be/econ/DP/IRES/2024006pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    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:ctl:louvir:2024006. 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: Virginie LEBLANC (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iruclbe.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.