The Effects of Child Mortality Changes on Fertility Choice and Parental Welfare

Empirical studies have overwhelmingly shown that a lower child mortality rate leads to lower fertility. Yet it has not been possible to satisfactorily analyze this relationship in even the simplest theoretical models. This paper attempts to bridge this gap between theory and the empirical literature...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	The Journal of political economy Vol. 99; no. 3; pp. 582 - 606
Main Author:	Sah, Raaj K.
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Chicago The University of Chicago Press 01-06-1991 University of Chicago Press University of Chicago, acting through its Press
Subjects:	Binomials Births Change Changes Child care Child mortality Children Children & youth Choices Death Rate Economic theory Effects Expected utility Family Family planning Fatalities Fertility Fertility rates Integers Modeling Mortality Parents Political economy Stochastic models Utilities costs Welfare Welfare economics
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Summary:	Empirical studies have overwhelmingly shown that a lower child mortality rate leads to lower fertility. Yet it has not been possible to satisfactorily analyze this relationship in even the simplest theoretical models. This paper attempts to bridge this gap between theory and the empirical literature. The paper also presents results on the effects of child mortality changes on parental welfare. The analysis captures the dynamic stochastic feature of fertility choice, subsumes other endogeneous choices (e.g., the quality of the children), and treats the number of children as a discrete variable (this added realism is important for the analysis).
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23 ObjectType-Article-1 ObjectType-Feature-2
ISSN:	0022-3808 1537-534X
DOI:	10.1086/261768