NOVAFRICA Research Seminar: Willa Friedman, University of Houston

In our upcoming NOVAFRICA Research Seminar, we are pleased to welcome Professor Willa Friedman, from University of Houston, on Tuesday, 20th October, at 11:00 AM (Lisbon time), in Room D007, at the Nova School of Business and Economics, Carcavelos campus. Who will present his paper:

“Quantity Responses to Quality: Initial Endowments and Endogenous Fertility”

Abstract

Parents make fertility decisions sequentially, updating plans as they learn about each child. This paper examines how a child’s endowment at birth affects subsequent fertility. We present a model that combines classical models of 1) the trade-offs between quantity and quality investments in children and 2) parents allocation decisions across siblings, namely whether to reinforce or compensate their children’s initial endowments. We then estimate the relationship between initial endowments and subsequent fertility decisions using Demographic and Health Surveys from West Africa. The region offers high fertility, near-zero sex selection before birth, and the presence of exogenous variation in initial endowments from idiosyncratic exposure to Harmattan dust. We find that subsequent fertility falls following larger births. The pattern holds for boys and girls, first and later births, and mothers with different education levels, and persists after restricting to surviving children. This is corroborated using exogenous variation in birth weight from idiosyncratic in utero exposure to Harmattan dust. Our results are also consistent with parents’ stated preferences for fertility following larger and smaller births. Consistent with previous findings on greater reinforcing behavior in lower-resourced settings, we find greater reductions in fertility from larger births in areas with lower socio-economic status.

Find out more about this and other NOVAFRICA seminars here.