An Analysis of the Timing of Fertility in Rural India

<a href="https://embed.stanford.edu/iframe/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpurl.stanford.edu%2Fdv704jb4185" class="su-underline">Show Content</a>

Abstract/Contents

Abstract: Fertility has long been modeled as the household supply and demand for children. However, very little empirical work has been done on understanding the timing of fertility in the developing country setting. Assuming that households are utility maximizing, it is expected that they choose when to begin reproduction, when to have the next child and when to cease reproduction. This paper looks at how the timing of fertility decisions is affected by household wealth and parental education across maternal cohorts. Modeling births in a survival analysis function framework, this paper finds that education delays all births and wealth delays the first birth but accelerates subsequent births. Lastly, cohort effects play a significant role in the time to the first birth but not the latter births, suggesting that only the preference of when to have the first child has changed over time.

Type of resource	text
Date created	May 2010

Author	de la Paz, Lorra
Primary advisor	Kochar, Anjini
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Department of Economics

Subject	Stanford Department of Economics
Subject	fertility
Subject	India
Subject	birth spacing
Subject	survival analysis
Genre	Thesis

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/dv704jb4185

Use and reproduction: User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.

Preferred Citation: de la Paz, Lorra. (2010). An Analysis of the Timing of Fertility in Rural India. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/dv704jb4185

Stanford University, Department of Economics, Honors Theses

Loading usage metrics...