Testing the quantity-quality fertility model: the use of twins as a natural experiment

Econometrica. 1980 Jan;48(1):227-40.

Abstract

PIP: The predictive content of the quantity-quality model of fertility and the empirical information required for verification under a minimal set of restrictions on the utility function is described. It is demonstrated that commodity-independent compensated price effects must be known to infer the existence of the unobservable interdependent shadow prices of the model with a relatively weak structure improsed on preference orderings. A method of using multiple birth events to substitute for these exogenous prices is proposed and applied to household data from India.

MeSH terms

  • Child
  • Demography
  • Economics*
  • Family Characteristics
  • Fertility*
  • Income
  • Models, Theoretical*
  • Parity
  • Population
  • Population Dynamics
  • Research
  • Social Sciences