Towards Gender Equality Newsletter Issue #8: Understanding Fertility Decline

A significant takeaway from the past century of rapid fertility decline around the world is that decisions about how many children to have do not occur in a vacuum. Parents pay attention to health signals such as children's survival prospects. They pay attention to the time and costs of raising children, as well as the benefits they bring to the household, such as their ability to work on a family farm or their long term earning prospects in a given economic environment.

Parents pay attention to what others are doing in terms of educational investments and extra-curricular activities to ensure that their children can compete with their peers. Some may pay attention to how many girls and boys they have based on how different genders are regarded and rewarded in a society.

Parents also consider their own health, time, and aspirations, and the support (or penalties) they can expect from partners, families, societies and governments.

Often, this rich set of internal calculations is reduced to simplistic caricatures in the public discourse. We hope that this newsletter opens up a whole world of compelling research on the agency and welfare of individuals today, and how investments in the future are shaped by the current economic and social environment. 

Dupas, Falezan, Mabeu, Rossi [Working Paper]

Fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa remain among the highest in the world, with a slower decline than in other regions. While some scholars attribute this to deep-rooted cultural preferences for large families, Mabeu and coauthors’ research investigates the role of long-term economic disruptions rooted in colonial labor policies. Using a unique historical natural experiment in Burkina Faso, the authors investigate whether the forced migration of young men in Burkina Faso under French colonial rule has shaped fertility behavior across generations.

Between the 1910s and 1940s, tens of thousands of young men in Burkina Faso were conscripted to work in infrastructure and plantation projects in neighboring colonies, especially Côte d’Ivoire. As shown in Figure 1, the southern and western regions of present-day Burkina Faso, were heavily targeted, while eastern regions —annexed to Niger during the 1932 colonial partition and lacking similar labor demand—were largely spared.

Exploiting this spatial variation in colonial recruitment intensity, the authors show that villages with higher historical exposure to forced labor migration exhibit significantly lower fertility today—by about 0.5 fewer children per woman by the end of reproductive age. This is shown in Figure 2 using two different geo-referenced contemporary datasets: data from the Burkina Families Aspirations and Behaviors project (BFAB) and Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS).

To explain this long-run negative effect on fertility, the paper shows that colonial labor policies established migration corridors that persisted across generations. Even after independence and the end of formal coercion, temporary male migration to Côte d’Ivoire remained concentrated in the same areas historically targeted by colonial recruiters. These flows have become self-sustaining, fueled by private employer demand (particularly cocoa plantations) and entrenched networks. Households in historically exposed regions are more likely to send male migrants to Côte d’Ivoire and receive regular remittances, highlighting a powerful channel of persistence rooted in colonial-era economic geography.

The study shows that remittance inflows have led to modest economic diversification. Adults in exposed villages are more likely to engage in non-agricultural activities, and children spend less time on farm work. Household heads also report lower demand for family labor, weakening the economic rationale for large families. The result is a shift toward smaller optimal family size, even though measures of women's education, empowerment, or child mortality remain largely unchanged. This suggests that remittances drove fertility decline by shifting production away from subsistence farming, not by improving human capital.

The study concludes that smaller family sizes are not only a reflection of changing norms but also a response to economic restructuring. This challenges the idea that fertility behaviors in Africa are purely shaped by fixed cultural norms. The study also highlights a "reversal of fortune": areas once targeted for their labor potential remain locked into low-return migration patterns, with only modest gains in economic development. Yet, even without major improvements in capital accumulation, the shift away from family farming has significantly changed reproductive choices. This underscores the importance of viewing fertility through the lens of economic transformation and historical context, not just social norms.

Goldin [Working Paper]

Fertility levels have greatly decreased in virtually every nation in the world, but the timing of the decline has differed even among developed countries. In Europe, Asia, and North America, total fertility rates of some nations dipped below the magic replacement figure of 2.1 as early as the 1970s. But in other nations, fertility rates remained substantial until the 1990s but plummeted subsequently. This paper addresses why some countries in Europe and Asia with moderate fertility levels in the 1980s, have become the “lowest-low” nations today (total fertility rates of less than 1.3), whereas those that decreased earlier have not. Also addressed is why the crossover point for the two groups of nations was around the 1980s and 1990s. An important factor that distinguishes the two groups is their economic growth in the 1960s and 1970s. Countries with “lowest low” fertility rates today experienced rapid growth in GNP per capita after a long period of stagnation or decline. They were catapulted into modernity, but the beliefs, values, and traditions of their citizens changed more slowly. Thus, swift economic change may lead to both generational and gendered conflicts that result in a rapid decrease in the total fertility rate.

Dettling & Kearney [Working Paper]

This paper proposes that the adoption of the modern U.S. mortgage (i.e., low down payment, long-term, and fixed-rate)—led by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veteran’s Administration (VA) loan insurance programs—set the stage for the mid-twentieth century U.S. baby boom by dramatically raising rates of home ownership for young families. Using newly digitized data on FHA- and VA- backed loan issuance and births by state-year, and a novel instrumental variables strategy that isolates supply-side variation in loan issuance, the authors find that the FHA and VA mortgage insurance programs led to 3 million additional births from 1935-1957, roughly 10 percent of the excess births in the baby boom. Aggregate effects mask differences by group—the authors find no effects of FHA/VA lending on births for Nonwhite women, consistent with well-documented racial discrimination in these lending programs. These results highlight the importance of access to home ownership for fertility decisions.

Genicot & Hernandez-de-Benito [Working Paper]

Does the absence of missing baby girls in sub-Saharan Africa imply a lack of son preference in the region? This paper uncovers systematic gendered effects on family structure and fertility in sub-Saharan Africa. Using data from Demographic and Health Surveys, the authors show that having a firstborn daughter, rather than a son, significantly influences women’s family dynamics. Women with a female firstborn experience higher long-term marriage rates but are less likely to marry the child’s father when the birth occurs prior to formal union. They also face higher divorce rates and greater likelihood of entering polygamous unions. Despite these marital transitions, they tend to have more children. Their analysis further reveals that having a firstborn daughter is associated with poorer living standards and adverse health outcomes for mothers. To examine the mechanisms driving these patterns, the authors employ a geographic regression discontinuity design along ancestral ethnic borders separating matrilineal and patrilineal traditions. This approach highlights patrilineality as a key driver, shaping both marriage dynamics and fertility.

Kim, Yum [Working Paper]

South Korea has been facing persistently low fertility rates and large gender gaps in labor supply. In response, the government has expanded parental leave benefits to address these challenges. To evaluate the effectiveness of these policies, the authors develop a quantitative, heterogeneous-household life-cycle model in which couples make joint decisions on careers, labor supply, savings, and child-related choices, including fertility, childcare, and parental leave take-up. The model is calibrated to recent Korean cohorts to replicate key patterns observed in the data, including segmented labor markets where career-oriented jobs require high entry costs and long working hours. The authors find that generous benefits increase fertility and reduce gender gaps in labor supply and wages by enabling more women to remain in career-oriented jobs during their child's early years, facilitating career advancement later. The positive labor supply effects are particularly strong among highly educated parents, and the policy can be self-financing through higher lifetime labor supply. Finally, the authors find that incentivizing joint parental leave use is more effective than mandating it and that the positive fertility effects may weaken when parents place greater emphasis on child quality—a trend observed in recent years. (See related published paper by Kim et al. (2024) titled "Status Externalities in Education and Low Birth Rates in Korea")

Agarwal, Li, Qin, Wu, Yan [Working Paper]

In this paper, the authors study the immediate impact of fertility relaxation on the gender wage gap. They explore a 2013 policy shock that relaxed the One-Child Policy in China. Using an employer-employee matched administrative data, this paper shows that after the policy shock, the salary of female new hires is reduced by 2.7% relative to the salary of male new hires, equivalent to a 47% increase in the gender wage gap in the data. The effect is more pronounced for female new hires aged below 35, implying the salary reduction is related to concerns about the increasing fertility of females.

Dupas, Jayachandran, Lleras-Muney, Rossi [Working Paper]

The authors conducted a randomized trial among 14,545 households in rural Burkina Faso to test the oft-cited hypothesis that limited access to contraception is an important driver of high fertility rates in West Africa. The authors do not find support for this hypothesis. Women who were given free access to modern contraception for three years did not have lower birth rates; even modest effects are rejected. The authors cross-randomized additional interventions to address inefficiencies that might depress demand for free contraception, specifically misperceptions about the child mortality rate and social norms. Free contraception did not significantly influence fertility even in combination with these interventions.

[EGC Article]

EGC Director Professor Rohini Pande delves into research on meritocratic recruitment and talent allocation, and how US companies and universities can react to new legislation eliminating DEI activities.

[Event Page]

The Yale Economic Growth Center (EGC) and Inclusion Economics at Yale University (YIE) will convene a research and policy dialogue in Nairobi, Kenya on June 30, 2025, in which we will discuss how macroeconomic transformation and growth strategies interact with gender gaps in sub-Saharan Africa, how investing in early childhood development can boost human capital and women’s socioeconomic advancement, how time use data can be effectively leveraged to inform policymaking, and how we can boost the digital economy through equal participation.

[Event Page; Recap Article]

On April 3, 2025 Yale Economic Growth Center and Yale Inclusion Economics launched the first North East Universities Gender and Development (NEUGD) Conference, bringing together early-career and senior scholars from universities in the northeast United States to explore the role of gender in the economy. The day-long conference featured twelve presentations by PhD students, covering topics ranging from gender disparities in the labor market and the home to the impact of abortion bans on maternal and infant health.

[Event Page; Conference Program & Speaker Bios; Professor Costas Meghir on the economics of early childhood development]

On May 7, 2025, the Yale Economic Growth Center and Yale Inclusion Economics, in collaboration with the MacMillan Center Council on African Studies at Yale University and the Gates Foundation, hosted a research-policy dialogue at Yale University highlighting emerging insights from a project examining the impacts of enriching public preschool quality and expanding access to younger children on children's and mothers' outcomes. This event hosted research-policy partners from Kenya’s State Department of Gender and Affirmative Action, the Government of Tharaka Nithi County in Kenya, an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Yale University, Kenyatta University, Bangor University, and the University of West Indies.

[EGC Article] 

In this EGC research spotlight, Yale EGC faculty affiliate Professor Costas Meghir discusses the economics of early childhood development, and how children can reach their full developmental potential through cost-effective and scalable programs.

[EGC Article]

Yale Inclusion Economics researchers were recently awarded $3.5 million by the Gates Foundation in a new investment that will expand the evidence base on pathways to promote women as agents in the digital economy and encourage evidence-based programming.

[EGC Article]

Almost fifty years after the U.N.’s establishment of International Women’s Day, Rohini Pande, Pinelopi (Penny) Koujianou Goldberg, and other Yale researchers offer valuable perspectives on gender, structural transformation, entrepreneurship, technology access, childcare, and new analytic methodologies.

The World Bank and partners have released two calls for proposals on Women and Jobs. The first, focused on Africa, has been released in partnership with African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET), the University of Ghana-Legon. It is a competitive call for papers and participation with a submission deadline of June 30, 2025, in advance of a policy research workshop planned for November 11-12, 2025 on the campus of the University of Ghana-Legon. The second, focused on Latin America and the Caribbean, is in partnership with Universidad de los Andes, Colombia, in collaboration with the Latin America and the Caribbean Gender Innovation Lab (LACGIL) of the World Bank, and the World Bank's Center for Research on Women and Jobs (CRWJ). It is also a competitive call for papers with a submission deadline of June 15, 2025, in advance of a workshop planned for October 6-7, 2025, to be hold in Bogota.