Women, Fertility and Economics: Fifty Years of Research

This paper provides a systematic review of the scientific literature on fertility and its relationship with economics. We explore theoretical and empirical frameworks developed in the last fifty years, emphasizing on the classical (Becker, Easterling) and unorthodox approaches (Bongaarts, Iannaccone, Lehrer). This literature review focused on journals of economics, sociology and demography indexed in the Journal Storage database (JSTOR), Elsevier’s research database (ScienceDirect), Elton B. Stephens Company research database (EBSCOhost) and Cambridge Information Group’s research database (Proquest). This review suggests that research of household behavior regarding decisions to participate in the labor market and fertility is a vast field of convergence of various multidisciplinary analytical attempts. Accordingly, economics has focused on this field through a multidisciplinary approach.