Models of Marital Status and Childbearing

Abstract

The authors review the microeconomic models of marital status and childbearing that have implictions for female labor supply. The geographic focus is on developed countries primarily the United States. 2 contains a review for the United States of trends in those demographic variables which are strongly associated with female labor supply: age at first marriage marital dissolution age at first birth the number of children born over the life cycle and the age pattern of fertility. Section 3 is concerned with demographic models and the empirical regularities in demographic behavior. The microeconomic models that attempt to explain the facts described in Sections 2 and 3 are then considered. 4 explores models of marital status and in Section 5 the single-period models of lifetime fertility decisions are reviewed. Section 6 is concerned with the efforts of Wolpin (1984) Newman (1985) and Hotz and Miller (1985) to extend the single-period fertility models to dynamic settings with uncertainty. (EXCERPT)