Di erential Fecundity , Markets and Gender Roles

Women are fecund for a shorter period of their lives than men. This paper investigates how di erential fecundity interacts with marriage, labor and nancial markets to a ect gender roles. The main ndings of the paper are: (i) Di erential fecundity does not have any market invariant gender e ect. (ii) Gender roles depend on competition for mates in the marriage market and the way in which ex-post di erences in earnings a ect that competition. (iii) Gender di erences in the labor market can occur without corresponding di erences in labor market opportunities, productivities in child rearing, or social norms. (iv) With uncertainty in human capital accumulation and no insurance against this uncertainty, the model generates behavior which is consistent with observed gender roles. Journal of Economic Literature Classi cation Numbers: J1 I thank Arthur Hosios, Mike Peters and Michael Smart for useful discussions. I also thank SSHRC for nancial support.