Agenda

31 Gen 2018 12:30

Selma Walther - Fertility Responses to Reductions in Mortality

Meeting Room 1, Campus San Giobbe, Venezia

Titolo completo: Fertility Responses to Reductions in Mortality: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from 20th Century America

Relatrice: Selma Walther, University of Warwick

Abstract: The introduction of the first antibiotics in the United States in 1937 led to sharp drops in child mortality from pneumonia and maternal mortality from puerperal sepsis. We leverage this plausibly exogenous medical innovation to examine fertility responses among women giving birth in this era. The decline in child mortality led women to delay childbearing and have fewer children overall, with fewer women having three or more children, and a larger share remaining childless. We present a new theory of the extensive margin response, where reductions in child mortality reduce the time women need to achieve their target number of children. This prompts fertility delay and labor market entry which, coupled with wage or fecundity shocks, can result in childlessness. We show that reductions in child mortality increased women's labor force participation, improved their occupational status and reduced their chances of ever having married. Maternal mortality decline had opposing effects on all of these outcomes.

Lingua

L'evento si terrà in italiano

Organizzatore

Dipartimento di Economia (JMSeminars)

Link

https://selmawalther.weebly.com/

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