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Title: Childlessness and Development

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2023

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Abstract: This paper leverages harmonized micro-data consisting of 82 million females from 164 household surveys covering 78 unique countries from all income level to exhibit novel findings between childlessness (the extensive margin of fertility) and development. Childlessness rate displays a U-shaped relationship with development, and contributes to 1/3 of heterogeneity of aggregate fertility worldwide. Investigating how females are selected into childlessness across countries, I argue heterogeneous life-cycle childlessness rates in different countries is the key driving forces behind this child-lessness rates differentials. Specifically, females in richer countries delay their fertility. I construct a two-period model, highlighting the motives for fertility delay (wage growth motive and dynamic motive) as well as reasons for childlessness (natural sterilization and preference-driven motive). The model points out key components to explain these empirical evidences jointly: the life-cycle wage growth profile and the joint distribution of wage and preference for having kids.

Url: https://paulwdai.github.io/files/childlessness.pdf

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Authors: Dai, Paul W

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA, IPUMS International, IPUMS CPS, IPUMS Global Health - DHS

Topics: Gender, Poverty and Welfare

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