This website uses cookies.

By clicking the "Accept" button or continuing to browse our site, you agree to first-party and session-only cookies being stored on your device to enhance site navigation and analyze site performance and traffic. For more information on our use of cookies, please see our Privacy Policy.

  1. Home
  2. Journals
  3. American Economic Review
  4. March 2005
  5. The Baby Boom and Baby Bust

The Baby Boom and Baby Bust

Download Full Text PDF

Abstract

What caused the baby boom? And can it be explained within the context of the secular decline in fertility that has occurred over the last 200 years? The hypothesis is that:(a) The secular decline in fertility is due to the relentless rise in real wages that increased the opportunity cost of having children;(b) The baby boom is explained by an atypical burst of technological progress in the household sector that occurred in the middle of the last century. This lowered the cost of having children.A model is developed in an attempt to account, quantitatively, for both the baby boom and bust.

Citation

Greenwood, Jeremy, Ananth Seshadri, and Guillaume Vandenbroucke. 2005. "The Baby Boom and Baby Bust." American Economic Review, 95 (1): 183-207. DOI: 10.1257/0002828053828680

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
  • J13 Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
  • J22 Time Allocation and Labor Supply
  • O33 Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes