This paper uses U.S. Census data from 1980, 1990 and 2000 to estimate synthetic-cohort life cycle effects of fertility on women's and couples' labor supply. Multiple births are used as an instrument to control for unobserved heterogeneity. For single women, the causal effect of fertility has...

Instrumental variables (IV) estimates of the effect of fertility on female labor supply have only been able to identify the causal effect of second and higher-parity children. This study uses exogenous variation in fertility caused by the Chinese lunar calendar to identify the effect of the...