Essays on the Economics of Fertility.

Abstract

In several countries, girls are more likely than boys to be aborted, to die in infancy, or to have younger siblings, all of which signal that parents want sons. However, standard techniques for measuring sex preferences fail to detect more subtle forms of sex preferences, especially when preferences are heterogeneous within a population. The first chapter of this dissertation introduces a new framework for estimating heterogeneity in sex preferences using birth history records. The framework selects among many possible combinations of preferences over the sex and number of children to best match observed childbearing. Empirical estimates indicate that sex preferences are more widespread than previously reported and exhibit substantial heterogeneity within regions. In Africa, this heterogeneity is associated with agricultural traditions that favor men or women.

During the apartheid era, all South Africans were formally classified as white, African, coloured, or Asian. Starting in 1970, the government directly provided free family planning services to residents of townships and white-owned farms. The second chapter of this dissertation demonstrates that, relative to African residents of other regions of the country, the share of African women that gave birth in these townships and white-owned farms declined by nearly one-third during the 1970s. Deferral of childbearing into the 1980s partially explains this decline, but lifetime fertility fell by one child per woman.

The third chapter of this dissertation provides new evidence that family planning programs are associated with a decrease in the share of children and adults living in poverty. The chapter uses publicly-available census data to study the relationship between U.S. family planning programs in the late 1960s and early 1970s and short and longer-term poverty rates. Cohorts born after federal family planning programs began were less likely to live in poverty in childhood and in adulthood.