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This essay formally presents the 1976 Pennsylvania school economic model of fertility behavior. It is suggested as an alternative to the Chicago-Columbia approach that dominates the current work on fertility economics. The major thesis of the Pennsylvania model is that in order to understand the variety of real world fertility behavior models of fertility determination must be expanded to include: 1) determinants of family preferences for consumption children and fertility regulation and 2) factors related to the fecundity or reproductive capacity of women. A framework is proposed which emphasizes the role of interdependent preferences and it is considered necessary to distinguish between those who deliberately regulate their fertility and those who do not when estimating how income changes or birth control education programs will affect fertility decisions. Data is interpreted from lesser developed countries which indicates that often observed fertility is not a product of deliberate choice. For such countries time-series and cross-sectional fertility variations may reflect natural fertility determinants rather than desired family size. The authors claim that their framework more viably explains such problems as the postwar American baby boom and the variability of fertility in developing countries.
Easterlin et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
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