Full Citation

Title: U.S. Fertility Rates and Childbearing, 1800-2010

Citation Type: Book, Section

Publication Year: 2018

ISBN: 9780199947973

ISSN: 9780199947973

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Abstract: Over the past two centuries, the U.S. has witnessed dramatic changes in fertility rates and childbearing. This chapter describes shifts in childbearing and family size from 1800 to 2010 and describes the role of different factors in this evolution. Demand factors such as industrialization, urbanization, rising family incomes, public health improvements, and the growth in women’s wages generally reduced the benefits and raised the costs of having many children. Supply factors such as increases in infant and child survival and improvements in the technology of birth control and abortion have also altered parents’ decisions about their childbearing. This chapter begins by summarizing the long-run trends in U.S. fertility rates and completed childbearing, both overall and how these patterns varied by mothers’ race/ethnicity and across geographic space. For the purposes of exposition, two hundred years are grouped into three broad periods: the 1800 to 1930 decline in fertility rates, the 1930 to 1960 stabilization in fertility rates followed by the baby boom, and the post-1960 decline and subsequent stabilization in fertility rates. The chapter next summarizes evidence on the determinants of childbearing in each period, including both economic and demographic explanations for these patterns. A final section weighs the evidence supporting the existence of two fertility transitions: a first transition driven by shifts in the demand for children and a second transition catalyzed by changes in supply side factors.

Url: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~baileymj/OUP_fertility_9_30_15.pdf

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Authors: Bailey, Martha, J; Hershbein, Brad, J

Editors: Cain, Louis, P; Fishback, Price, V; Rhode, Paul, W

Pages: 896

Volume Title: Oxford Handbook of American Economic History

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Publisher Location: Oxford

Volume: 1

Edition:

Data Collections: IPUMS USA, IPUMS CPS

Topics: Family and Marriage, Fertility and Mortality

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