Social Approval, Fertility and Female Labour Market

Maybe the most important development in the last thirty years with regard to theory formation in the social sciences is what with the help of hindsight can now be called “economic imperialism.” (cf. Lindenberg, 1985) But while this may be true for theory formation, much of the substantive insights are to be found in the more messy social sciences, like anthropology and sociology. The economic approach to fertility and labour market behaviour does not seem to me to be an exception to this state of affairs. The most sophisticated models on the subject today are economic in origin (cf. overview Siegers, 1985 and especially Willis, 1973, Becker, 1981). But models only lead to substantive claims by the assumptions made concerning their parameters, what has been called “bridge assumptions” that bridge the distance between the model and reality, at least to some (hopefully increasing) degree. Becker’s book (1981) for example, is full of bridge assumptions, but the most important one is also the one he is most proud of: that the relevant tradeoff in the decision to have children is quantity versus quality. This assumption helps solve the puzzle “that the demand for children is highly responsive to price and perhaps to income, even when children have no close substitutes.” (Becker, 1981, p. 107).