IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/0021.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Contraception and Fertility: Household Production Under Uncertainty

Author

Listed:
  • Robert T. Michael
  • Robert J. Willis

Abstract

Over the past century fertility behavior in the United Stated has undergone profound changes Measured by cohort fertility the average number of children per married woman had declined from about 5.5 children at the time of the Civil War to 2.4 children at the time of the Great Depression. It is seldom emphasized however that an even greater relative change took place in the dispersion of fertility among these women: the percentage of women with, say, seven or more children declined from 36% to under 6%. While students of population have offered reasonably convincing explanations for the decline in fertility over time, they have not succeeded in explaining the fluctuations in the trend and have made surprisingly little effort to explain the large and systematic decline in the dispersion of fertility over time. In this paper we attempt to study contraception behavior and its effects on fertility. One of the effects on which we focus considerable attention is the dispersion or variance in fertility. Our analysis is applied to cross-sectional data but it also provides an explanation for the decline in the variance in fertility over time.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert T. Michael & Robert J. Willis, 1973. "Contraception and Fertility: Household Production Under Uncertainty," NBER Working Papers 0021, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:0021
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w0021.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mincer, Jacob & Polachek, Solomon, 1974. "Family Investment in Human Capital: Earnings of Women," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(2), pages 76-108, Part II, .
    2. Willis, Robert J, 1973. "A New Approach to the Economic Theory of Fertility Behavior," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(2), pages 14-64, Part II, .
    3. Kelvin J. Lancaster, 1966. "A New Approach to Consumer Theory," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 74(2), pages 132-132.
    4. Ben-Porath, Yoram, 1973. "Economic Analysis of Fertility in Israel: Point and Counterpoint," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(2), pages 202-233, Part II, .
    5. Cain, Glen G, 1971. "Issues in the Economics of a Population Policy for the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 61(2), pages 408-417, May.
    6. Theodore W. Schultz, 1974. "Marriage, Family, Human Capital, and Fertility," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number schu74-2.
    7. Michael, Robert T, 1973. "Education and the Derived Demand for Children," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(2), pages 128-164, Part II, .
    8. Theodore W. Schultz, 1973. "New Economic Approaches to Fertility," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number schu73-1.
    9. repec:cai:popine:popu_p1961_16n4_0636 is not listed on IDEAS
    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. Michael Grossman, 1976. "The Correlation between Health and Schooling," NBER Chapters, in: Household Production and Consumption, pages 147-224, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Donald Snyder, 1974. "Economic determinants of family size in West Africa," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 11(4), pages 613-627, November.
    3. W. Hicks, 1974. "Economic development and fertility change in Mexico, 1950–1970," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 11(3), pages 407-421, August.
    4. Marcel Fulop, 1977. "The Empirical Evidence from the Fertility Demand Functions: A Review of the Literature," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 21(2), pages 12-22, October.
    5. Nicola Barban & Elisabetta De Cao & Marco Francesconi, 2021. "Gene-Environment Effects on Female Fertility," CESifo Working Paper Series 9337, CESifo.
    6. Barbara Janowitz, 1976. "An analysis of the impact of education on family size," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 13(2), pages 189-198, May.
    7. Bilsborrow, Richard E. & Guilkey, David K., 1987. "Community and institutional influence on fertility: analytical issues," ILO Working Papers 992544533402676, International Labour Organization.
    8. Kenneth Troske & Alexandru Voicu, 2013. "The effect of the timing and spacing of births on the level of labor market involvement of married women," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 483-521, August.
    9. repec:ilo:ilowps:254453 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Robert T. Michael, 1975. "Education and Fertility," NBER Chapters, in: Education, Income, and Human Behavior, pages 339-364, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. James Cramer, 1979. "Employment trends ofyoung mothers and the opportunity cost of babies in the United States," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 16(2), pages 177-197, May.
    12. Caroline Krafft, 2020. "Why is fertility on the rise in Egypt? The role of women’s employment opportunities," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 33(4), pages 1173-1218, October.
    13. Veloso, Fernando A., 2003. "A Competitive Growth Model with Endogenous Fertility," Brazilian Review of Econometrics, Sociedade Brasileira de Econometria - SBE, vol. 23(1), May.
    14. Lombard, J. P. & Kassier, W. E., 1990. "Implementering Van Die Intervalbenadering By Die Bepaling Van Besluitnemers Se Houding Teenoor Risiko," Agrekon, Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa (AEASA), vol. 29(4), December.
    15. Álvarez Llorente, Gema, 1997. "Decisiones de fecundidad y de participación en el mercado de trabajo de la mujer en España," DE - Documentos de Trabajo. Economía. DE 3884, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    16. Tadashi Yamada & Tetsuji Yamada, 1984. "Part-time Employment of Married Women and Fertility in Urban Japan," NBER Working Papers 1474, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Anastasia Holobinko, 2012. "Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Understanding Human Migration Patterns and their Utility in Forensic Human Identification Cases," Societies, MDPI, vol. 2(2), pages 1-21, June.
    18. Yoram Porath, 1975. "First-generation effects on second-generation fertility," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 12(3), pages 397-405, August.
    19. Jona Schellekens, 2009. "Family allowances and fertility: Socioeconomic differences," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 46(3), pages 451-468, August.
    20. Grogan, L., 2002. "What Caused the Post-Transition Fertility Decline in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union?," Working Papers 2002-5, University of Guelph, Department of Economics and Finance.
    21. Andalón, Mabel & Williams, Jenny & Grossman, Michael, 2014. "Empowering Women: The Effect of Schooling on Young Women's Knowledge and Use of Contraception," IZA Discussion Papers 7900, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    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:nbr:nberwo:0021. 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.