Fertility in Developing Countries

by the wife is associated, if the husband’s income is held constant, with higher fertility in
Thailand but not in Brazil (Schultz, 1990). Microcredit targeted to groups of women in
Bangladesh increases women’s earnings and increases their later fertility (Pitt et al, 1999).

In an experimentally designed family planning and health programme started in 1977 for
women in rural villages of Matlab, Bangladesh, the women in villages benefiting from the
programme had one fewer child by 1996 than did comparable women in comparison villages
(Joshi and Schultz, 2007). The programme is also associated with increased woman’s health, as
measured by their body mass index (weight divided by height squared), reduced child mortality
before age five, and increased years of schooling of boys aged 9-14 and 15-29. More studies of
these long-run consequences of population policies on fertility and other family outcomes will be
needed to assess the within-family consequences of fertility and population policies. Recognition
that fertility is endogenous to other family life-cycle choices challenges economists to measure
these potentially important life-cycle causal connections, and thereby provide a sounder basis for
evaluating how population policies affects the social allocation of resources.

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