Comparative Advantage, International Trade, and Fertility

Andrei Levchenko, Quy-Toan Do and Claudio Raddatz

No 10903, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We analyze theoretically and empirically the impact of comparative advantage in international trade on fertility. We build a model in which industries differ in the extent to which they use female relative to male labor, and countries are characterized by Ricardian comparative advantage in either female-labor or male-labor intensive goods. The main prediction of the model is that countries with comparative advantage in female-labor intensive goods are characterized by lower fertility. This is because female wages, and therefore the opportunity cost of children are higher in those countries. We demonstrate empirically that countries with comparative advantage in industries employing primarily women exhibit lower fertility. We use a geography-based instrument for trade patterns to isolate the causal effect of comparative advantage on fertility.

Keywords: Fertility; Trade integration; Comparative advantage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F16 J13 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-gro and nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP10903 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Comparative advantage, international trade, and fertility (2016)
Working Paper: Comparative Advantage, International Trade, and Fertility (2015)
Working Paper: Comparative advantage, international trade, and fertility (2014)
Working Paper: Comparative Advantage, International Trade, and Fertility (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:10903

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP10903

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().