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Demographers have pointed out that in many cases mortality decline precedes fertility decline, which suggests a causal link from falling mortality to falling fertility.
The model of Barro and Becker (1989) implies falling mortality rates tend to lower the cost of having a surviving child, hence fertility actually increases, not decreases, as mortality declines. (Instead of emphasizing mortality decline, the Barro-Becker framework points to the quantity-quality tradeoff as an explanation for fertility decline: parents choose to have smaller families in order to invest more in the education of each child.)
Barro, Robert and Gary S. Becker (1989): “Fertility Choice in a Model of Economic Growth,” Econometrica 57(2): 481-501.
Kalemli-Ozcan (2003) argues when mortality is stochastic and parents want to avoid the possibility of ending up with very few (or zero) surviving children, a “precautionary” demand for children arises.
Extending the theoretical model of Barro and Becker (1989), Doepke (2005) predicts a negative relationship between mortality and fertility.
Kalemli-Ozcan, Sebnem (2003) “A Stochastic Model of Mortality, Fertility, and Human Capital Investment.” Journal of Development Economics, 70 (1): 103-118
Doepke, Matthias (2005): “Child Mortality and Fertility Decline: Does the Barro-Becker Model Fit the Facts?” Journal of Population Economics, 18(2): 337-366.
Burdsall (1988) suggest the so-called Norm curve, which describes fertility as a monotonically declining function of per capita income.
Birdsall, N. (1988): “Economic Approaches to Population Growth”, in Handbook of Development Economics, by H. Chenery and T.N. Srinivasan, Eds, Vol. 1, Elsevier: Amsterdam.
Fertility = 1.7950 - 0.00973 GDP + 0.0367 mortality
Stderror (0.1230) (0.00664) (0.0020)
P-value [9.44E-32]
[0.1446] [2.83E-42]
Economically, holding mortality rate constant, we expect fertility rate to lower by 0.00973 per woman when the per capita income increases by US$1000.
Economically, holding per capita income constant, we expect the fertility rate to rise by 0.0367 per woman when mortality increases by 1 infant death per thousand births.
Statistically different from zero at 1% level of significance.
Not statistically different from zero even at 10% level of significance.
Fertility rate is strongly directly related to mortality rate. When mortality rate is included, the explanatory power of income
per capita on fertility rate seems small.
Cautions: Although the model setup seems to suggest a low mortality
rate will cause a low fertility rate. The reverse could be true. Countries with a low fertility rate may spend more on infant survival and hence a low mortality rate.
The true relationship need not be linear, e.g., Strulik and Sikandar (2002).
Strulik, Holger and Siddiqui Sikandar (2002): “Tracing the income-fertility nexus: Nonparametric Estimates for a Panel of Countries,” Economics Bulletin, 15 (5): 1-9.
Supplement 13: Supplement 13: An example of regression analysis example of regression analysisA test of the relation between A test of the relation between fertility rate and mortality rate?fertility rate and mortality rate?