Fertility Responses to Short-Term Economic Stress in Mexico

Another way of assessing living standards in Mexico is presented in this paper by adopting the definition of living standards provided by the Eurasia Population and Family History Project. A discrete-time event-history analysis model is performed in order to analyse and examine the responses of fertility to short-term economic stress during the period 1963 to 2011. The main findings support the idea that fertility responds negatively to economic stress in Mexico but this response is very small. Nevertheless, the effect of economic stress differs by socioeconomic groups and cohorts. In this context, the results suggest that living standards in Mexico are not low or at least not as low as they were in other populations in the past. Yet, further research should be enhanced in order to give a final assessment regarding living standards in the Mexican population