This paper reviews Gary Becker's contributions to the economic analysis of fertility, from his 1960 paper introducing the quantity-quality tradeoff to later work linking the economics of fertility to the theory of economic growth.

We argue that one major cause of the U.S. postwar baby boom was the increased demand for female labor during World War II. We develop a quantitative dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous fertility and female labor-force participation decisions. We use the model to assess the...