Motherhood and Female Labor Supply in the Developing World: Evidence from Infertility Shocks
利用不孕作为家庭规模的外生工具变量，研究子女数量对发展中国家女性劳动参与的影响，发现子女不影响工作概率和强度，但影响工作类型。
We introduce a new instrument for family size, infertility, to investigate the causal relationship between children and female labor force participation. Infertility mimics an experiment where nature assigns an upper bound for family size, independent of a woman's background. This new instrument allows us to investigate the differential labor supply without restrictions on initial family size. Using the Demographic and Health Surveys from 26 developing countries we show that OLS estimates are biased upward. We find that the presence of children affects neither the likelihood of work nor its intensity, but impacts the type of work a woman pursues.