Fertility: The Role of Culture and Family Experience

Fernández, Raquel; Fogli, Alessandra

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Fertility: The Role of Culture and Family Experience

NBER Working Paper No. w11569

13 Pages Posted: 10 Oct 2005 Last revised: 11 Feb 2022

See all articles by Raquel Fernández

Raquel Fernández

New York University - Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Alessandra Fogli

Leonard N. Stern School of Business - Department of Economics

There are 3 versions of this paper

Date Written: August 2005

Abstract

This paper attempts to disentangle the direct effects of experience from those of culture in determining fertility. We use the GSS to examine the fertility of women born in the US but from different ethnic backgrounds. We take lagged values of the total fertility rate in the woman's country of ancestry as the cultural proxy and use the woman's number of siblings to capture her direct family experience. We find that both variables are significant determinants of fertility, even after controlling for several individual and family-level characteristics.

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Fernández, Raquel and Fogli, Alessandra, Fertility: The Role of Culture and Family Experience (August 2005). NBER Working Paper No. w11569, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=788434