Childlessness and economic development: A survey

Abstract

This chapter shows why, beyond average fertility, childlessness matters in itself. Childlessness reacts to economic incentives in a peculiar way, which cannot be described by usual economic models of fertility. We make a distinction between childlessness due to poverty and childlessness due to economic opportunities. It allows to better understand the dynamics of childlessness along the history but also why the extensive margin of fertility (childlessness) does not adjust to economic shocks and development policies in the same way as the intensive margin (number of children of mothers). Introducing marriage into this framework provides new insights: higher educational homogamy per se decreases childlessness as it favors marriage. Nevertheless, because educational homogamy is most of the time accompanied by a rise in female education, it may also be associated with increases in childlessness in the data.