An economic framework for fertility analysis

Abstract

The standard formulation of the microeconomic theory of fertility, which emphasizes the demand for children and, to a lesser extent, the costs of fertility control, is too limited in its scope for use by most demographers and sociologists. The approach advanced in this paper adds to the usual theory a more explicit and formal treatment of the production of children, including the possibility of shifts in production independent of demand conditions. This more comprehensive framework is compared with the usual approach in the analysis of several empirical problems-non-marital fertility, premodern fertility fluctuations and differentials, and the secular fertility decline-and is shown to be better suited for incorporating the concepts and hypotheses of noneconomists along with those of economists.