Marketization and the Fertility of Highly Educated Women along the Extensive and Intensive Margins

This paper documents a convergence in fertility rates along the extensive and intensive margins between women with advanced degrees and other women over the last four decades in the U.S. It then estimates the effect of the cost of home production substitutes on fertility in the extensive and intensive margins, and allows this effect to vary by women's educational group. The decline in thee cost of home production substitutes, relative to a highly educated woman's own wage can explain 11.9% of the increase in the number of own children in the household. When looking separately at the intensive and extensive margins, it finds that the decline in relative childcare cost can account for 6.6% of the increase in fertility in the intensive margin and 16.1% of the decline in childlessness rates of women with advanced degrees.