Abstract
Recently Butz and Ward (BW) have challenged the conventional view that fertility is closely linked to economic prosperity. In 1979, they argued that they had detected the emergence of countercyclical fertility in the U.S. and that this phenomenon would become the norm in advanced economies. They argued that, as more women entered the work force, couples would increasingly time births to coincide with periods of high female unemployment and periods when the female real wage is low—that is, during economic slumps rather than booms. Their analysis of U.S. data for the post-war period apparently confirms this theory. In this paper we have reanalyzed BW's estimated equations. This analysis indicates that their key variables do not help to explain fertility. We conclude that the data do not provide empirical support for BW's theory and that their key variables do not aid in forecasting fertility rates.
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