Luca Pensieroso

(IRES/LIDAM, UCLouvain)

will give a presentation on

Fertility and Family Type in the United States: a Historical Analysis

Abstract

We provide a historical decomposition of fertility in the United States by family type. We document a new fact about the American fertility transition: intergenerational coresidence has been systematically associated with lower fertility relative to nuclear families, with the difference shrinking over time. This pattern is robust to controlling for several demographic and socioeconomic confounders. To rationalise these findings, we build a novel model with endogenous fertility and intergenerational coresidence. In the model, a positive differential fertility in favour of the nuclear family emerges when the amount of resources allocated to the young under coresidence is lower than the amount they would enjoy in a nuclear family. We show how this income effect hinges on the interplay between the relative income of the young and their preferences for intergenerational coresidence. Simulations from a calibrated dynamic general equilibrium version of the model show that the model has the right qualitative behaviour, and is quantitatively meaningful.