Recently it has been suggested that low fertility countries may be caught in a trap that is hard to get out of. One important mechanism in such a trap would be social interaction and its effect on the ideal family size. Such social interaction mechanisms are hard to capture in formal models,...

This paper studies whether Swedish fertility swings and variation in public expenditure for children are related events. In the 1930s Swedish birth rates had fallen to levels close to the death rates and in public discourse this was perceived as a major social and national crisis, spurring a...