Fertility and Development: Evidence from North Africa

I conduct a weak-exogeneity test of Becker‟s propositions on the effects of fertility and investment in physical capital on development by using Granger-causality tests and examining whether past changes in fertility can explain changes in development and investment. Overall, the empirical results tend to be consistent with causality from fertility to development (at least in the weak exogeneity sense) but I find mixed results on the impact of fertility on investment in physical capital.