Economic geography and cross-region fertility revisited

ABSTRACT

This paper reinvestigates cross-region variation of fertility rates within a country. We develop a simple model where households with heterogeneous preferences make locational and reproductive choices. Considering the congestion diseconomy associated with reproduction, we show that the greater the population size, the lower the fertility rate. Using data from Japan, we find that a doubling of population size decreases the total fertility rate by around 6.4%.

KEYWORDS:

• Fertility rate
• population size
• location choice
• instruments variable

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J13
• R12

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Our empirical negative relation is consistent with cross-region comparison in other countries. For example, Firebaugh (1982) shows that population density and fertility are negatively related across 22 villages in India.

² The overall standard deviation, between standard deviation, and within standard deviation of log(population) in our panel data are 0.439, 0.420, and 0.138.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [71973093].