This paper provides a new explanation for the narrowing and reversal of the gender education gap. It highlights the indirect effect of returns to human capital on parents' preferences for sons and the resulting demand for children and education. We assume that parents maximize the full income of...

Conventional wisdom suggests that in developed countries income and fertility are negatively correlated. We present new evidence that between 2001 and 2009 the cross-sectional relationship between fertility and women's education in the U.S. is U-shaped. At the same time, average hours worked...

We argue that one major cause of the U.S. postwar baby boom was the increased demandfor female labor during World War II. We develop a quantitative dynamic general equilibriummodel with endogenous fertility and female labor-force participation decisions...