FERTILITY RISK IN THE LIFE CYCLE |
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| Authors: | Sekyu Choi |
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| Institution: | University of Bristol, U.K.This is part of my Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania and previously circulated under the title “Life‐Cycle Fertility: Means vs. Motives vs. Opportunities.” I would like to acknowledge the support and encouragement of José‐Víctor Ríos‐Rull throughout this project. This article benefited from discussions with Jeremy Greenwood, Dirk Krueger, Jesús Fernández‐Villaverde, Virginia Sánchez‐Marcos, Iourii Manovski, Ken Wolpin, Hal Cole, John Knowles, Nezih Guner, Juan Carlos Conesa, two anonymous referees, and seminar participants at several institutions. I gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through grant ECO2012‐32392 and through the Severo Ochoa Programme for Centres of Excellence in R and D (SEV‐2011‐0075). All errors are mine. |
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| Abstract: | In this article, I study fertility decisions with special emphasis on the timing of births and abortions over the life cycle. Given the policy debate regarding abortion availability and recent evidence of its positive impact on women's outcomes, understanding the fertility process should help guide the discussion. Here, I present a life‐cycle model of consumption–savings and fertility decisions in an environment with uninsurable income shocks and imperfect fertility control. My model presents a framework in which both opportunity costs of child rearing and technological restrictions (in the form of contraception effectiveness) have roles shaping lifetime fertility choices. |
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