From 1850 to 2000, in Western European countries life expectancy rose from 30–40 to 80 years and the average number of children per woman fell from 4 to 5 children to slightly more than one. To gauge the economic consequences of these demographic trends, we implement an overlapping generations...

This article provides new evidence that family planning programs are associated with a decrease in the share of children and adults living in poverty. Our research design exploits the county roll-out of US family planning programs in the late 1960s and early 1970s and examines their relationship...