Endogenous fertility in a model with non-dynastic parental altruism.

An economic model of fertility choice is presented and discussed in which the utility level of agents depends upon their consumption, the number of children they have, and upon the consumption of their children. Parents are altruistic toward their children, but in a more limited sense than in the fertility model presented by Becker and Barro in 1988, in which the utility of parents depends upon the utility of their children and therefore indirectly upon the consumption and fertility decisions made by all subsequent generations. The concept of a bequest equilibrium is used to solve the nondynastic model considered. The steady state birth rate was found to be lower in the nondynastic model than in the Becker-Barro model. However, the key qualitative predictions concerning the dynamic behavior of fertility are surprisingly similar in both models.