NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

Business Cycles and Fertility Dynamics in the U.S.: A Vector-Autoregressive Model

Naci H. Mocan

NBER Working Paper No. 3177 (Also Reprint No. r1545)*
Issued in March 1991
NBER Program(s):   HE

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Using recent developments in time-series econometrics, this

paper investigates the behavior of fertility over the business

cycle. The sex-specific unemployment rates, the divorce rate and

the fertility rate are shown to be governed by stochastic trends.

Furthermore, fertility is determined to be co-integrated with the

divorce and unemployment rates.

In the bivariate vector-autoregressions between fertility

and unemployment, an increase in the female or male unemployment

rates generate a decrease in fertility, which confirms the

findings of previous time-series research concerning the

procyclical behavior of fertility. However, when the models

include the divorce rate and the proportion of young marriages as

additional regressors, shocks to the unemployment rates bring

about an increase in fertility, implying the countercyclicality

of fertility.

*Published: "Business Cycles and Fertility Dynamics in the United States: A Vector Autoregressive Model." From Journal of Population Economics, Vol. 3, pp. 125- 146, (1990).

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