Estimating Fertility Responses to Policy Measures in the German Democratic Republic

Abstract

Everywhere the advent of industrial society and correspondingly high incomes has been accompanied by a fall in births. If one could only explain the fall unambiguously policy measures to counter it could be readily devised. Unfortunately there are many explanations, and from each follows a different policy prescription. If the income derived from women's work in offices and industry has become so high that they cannot afford the time to have children, then payments from the State to cover what they lose through child raising will offset that. If the obstacle is the cost of clothing and educating children to present high standards, then family allowances will serve and be much less expensive than replacing women's salaries. But if the reason for couples holding back is the danger of divorce, where the children would be a handicap to the single parent for work and for remarriage, then state subsidy is not so obviously the answer. And if the obstacle to childbearing is a shift in the culture from a familistic to an individual orientation then perhaps no affordable amount of money will induce people to have children. One could go on this way. If parents do not have children because they cannot find living premises sufficiently large for them, then housing subsidies are the answer. Some explanations of the fall in fertility lead to simple policy solutions; others would seem not to be amenable to any kind of policy. The inability to distinguish among competing theories of the fall…