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. …

fertility, both desired and realized, as a central pathway through which the relationship has been historically theorized and … independently from fertility decline. Finally, we assess the state and quality of evidence of these relationships and propose …

The historical fertility transition is the process by which much of Europe and North America went from high to low … fertility in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This transformation is central to recent accounts of long …-run economic growth. Prior to the transition, women bore as many as eight children each, and the elasticity of fertility with …