CONTRACEPTION AND THE DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bhattacharya, Joydeep; Chakraborty, Shankha
• 署名单位: Iowa State University; University of Oregon
• 刊物名称: ECONOMIC JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0013-0133
• DOI: 10.1111/ecoj.12431
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 2263-2301
• 关键词: fertility decline; child-mortality; CHOICE

摘要

Inspired by the historical English experience, we modify the Beckerian paradigm of fertility by incorporating costly, societal influence on contraception. Heterogeneous, generationally-linked households choose between 'traditional' and 'modern' contraception. The modern has a higher fixed but lower variable cost of averting childbirths. Initially the rich adopt the modern, which unleashes society-wide diffusion. Eventually everyone switches, lowering fertility further and across households. Hastening the switch is falling child mortality. Quantitative experiments suggest contraception was a vital link between the historical mortality and fertility transitions, though not the latter's proximate cause. Implications for more recent transitions are discussed.