CULTURE’S EFFECT ON FEMALE FERTILITY AND LABOR CHOICES IN THE UNITED STATES

This paper follows the methodologies of a previous study published in the American Economic Journal by Fogli and Fernandez that explores culture’s effect on second-generation American women and their work versus fertility trade-off. The difference between this paper and the previous study – used as a model – is the years of US census data used for the regressions. Fogli and Fernandez use 1970 United States census data while this study uses 2010 United States census data. As in their study, the culture proxy for work is labor force participation rates (LFP) and total fertility rates (TFR) for fertility assigned by the women\u27s country of ancestry. Adjusting for some limitations posed by the data set, the results of this study show that the cultural proxies have significant results, though the sign of these proxies differs from the signs found in the model study. This paper also provides three extensions to the base study: insurance coverage, age at first marriage consideration, and a multiracial sample pool