Intergenerational Associations and the Fertility Transition

Fertility change is distinct from other forms of social and economic change because it directly alters the size and composition of the next generation. This paper studies how changes in population composition over the fertility transition feed back into the path of average fertility across generations. Consistent with a quality-quantity model drawn from theories of long-run growth and the demographic transition, microdata from 40 developing countries show that intergenerational fertility associations are weak at the start of the fertility transition and then strengthen as it progresses, due to the alignment of the skill-fertility relationship across generations. As fertility approaches the replacement level, this strengthening reweights the population to raise aggregate fertility rates, pushing back against aggregate fertility decline. ∗E-mail: [email protected]. I am grateful for comments from seminar and conference participants at AEA/ASSA, Bocconi University, BREAD, CIREQ, Hebrew University, Lund University, NBER (Children, Income Distribution and Macroeconomics), Northeastern University, Stockholm University, Princeton University, UC Berkeley, UC Louvain, University of Namur, and University of Warwick.