We provide a new explanation for sub-Saharan Africa’s slow demographic and economic change. In a model where children die from infectious disease, childhood health affects human capital and noninfectious-disease related adult mortality. When child mortality falls from lower prevalence, as in...

The childhood disease burden depends on the prevalence of infectious diseases, their case fatalities, and long-term morbidity. We propose a quantity–quality model of fertility choice under uncertainty that emphasizes morbidity and mortality from infectious disease. The fertility response to a...

The link between the mortality and epidemiological transitions is used to identify the effect of the former on the fertility transition: a mortality transition that is not accompanied by improving morbidity causes slower demographic and economic change. In a model where children may die from...

The childhood disease burden depends on the prevalence of infectious diseases, their case fatalities, and long-term morbidity. We propose a quantity-quality model of fertility choice under uncertainty that emphasizes morbidity and mortality from infectious disease. The fer- tility response to a...