We develop a tractable framework with a fully specified dynamic process of demographic and labor decisions over an individual female's life span to determine the timing of childbearing. Fertility affects women's behavior through three channels: its tradeoff with leisure, its interactions with...

Using data from the 1970 and 1980 Censuses, we examined the fertility of immigrant women from the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean where fertility rates averaged in excess of 5.5 children per women during the period of immigration to the U.S. Perhaps the most interesting...

We study the effects of explosive growth in the Bangladeshi ready-made garments industry on the lives on Bangladeshi women. We compare the marriage, childbearing, school enrollment and employment decisions of women who gain greater access to garment sector jobs to women living further away from...

This paper explores how historical gender roles become entrenched as norms over the long run. In the historical United States, gender roles on the frontier looked starkly different from those in settled areas. Male-biased sex ratios led to higher marriage rates for women and lower for men. Land...

We investigate women's fertility, labor and marriage market responses to a health innovation that led to reductions in mortality from treatable causes, and especially large declines in child mortality. We find delayed childbearing, with lower intensive and extensive margin fertility, a decline...

To assess whether earnings-dependent maternity leave positively impacts fertility and narrows the baby gap between high educated (high earning) and low educated (low earning) women, I exploit a major maternity leave benefit reform in Germany that considerably increases the financial incentives...

How do children affect women in science? We investigate this question using rich biographical data, linked with patents and publications, for 83,000 American scientists in 1956 at the height of the baby boom. Our analyses reveal a unique life-cycle pattern of productivity for mothers. While...

In this survey, we argue that the economic analysis of fertility has entered a new era. First-generation models of fertility choice were designed to account for two empirical regularities that, in the past, held both across countries and across families in a given country: a negative...

This paper presents the first systematic estimates of the direct money costs of reproduction-related health services. In 1982 Americans spent approximately $17.7 billion for contraception, abortion, treatment of infertility, obstetrical care, and infant care. This represented 5.5 percent of...

This paper examines the effect of a nationwide healthcare reform implemented in Turkey on women's fertility decisions. The Family Medicine Program (FMP), introduced in 2005, provided a wide-range of primary healthcare services, free of charge, and achieved universal access by matching each...