The Effects of Child Mortality Changes on Fertility Choice and Parental Welfare
用理论模型解释实证中儿童死亡率下降导致生育率下降的现象，并分析死亡率变化对父母福利的影响，模型考虑了生育决策的动态随机性和子女数量的离散性。
Empirical studies have overwhelmingly shown that a lower child mortality rate leads to lower fertility. Yet it has not been possible to satisfactorily analyze this relationship in even the simplest theoretical models. This paper attempts to bridge this gap between theory and the empirical literature. The paper also presents results on the effects of child mortality changes on parental welfare. The analysis captures the dynamic stochastic feature of fertility choice, subsumes other endogenous choices (e.g., the quality of the children), and treats the number of children as a discrete variable (this added realism is important for the analysis). Copyright 1991 by University of Chicago Press.