The Impact of Education, Income, and Mortality on Fertility in Jamaica
March 1997
Abstract
The socioeconomic determinants of cumulative and recent fertility are investigated with micro data from Jamaica, a middle income country with low rates of infant mortality and total fertility. Infant mortality has a significant non-linear influence on fertility, peaking at a mortality rate of 0.46. Both education and income have strong negative effects on births but the impact of income is larger; for rural women the birth elasticities are -0.56 and -0.39 for income and education respectively. Finally, the transmission of the education effect appears to be through raising the value of time of the woman rather than changing preferences.
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