Why Do Americans Want Children

FOR THE PAST HALF-CENTURY, demographers have been preoccupied with the issue of fertility reduction. In his influential book, Theory of Fertility Decline, Caldwell (1982: 350) asserted that "[t]he fundamental challenge in the demographic field is to explain the onset of fertility decline." The basic premise of Caldwell's "wealth flows' theory is that high fertility has been economically advantageous "to most families over most of human history,' because children created "wealth' (broadly defined to include "all the money, goods, services and guarantees that one person provides to another"), and that "wealth flows' were directed upward from the younger to the older generation (ibid.: 334, 333). He concluded that " [t]he onset of

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