AMER.LABOR: Involuntary Childlessness and Voluntary Fertility

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                ABSTRACTS IN ECONOMIC HISTORY
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Name: John E. Murray
Email: jmurray@uoft02.utoledo.edu
Institution: University of Toledo

Co-author: Bradley A. Lagger, University of Toledo

Title: Involuntary Childlessness and Voluntary Fertility Control in a
Sample of American Men

Internet Address of abstracted work: not available

By mail:
Department of Economics, UH4110
University of Toledo
Toledo, OH 43606-3390

Language: English

Abstract:
The role of men during the fertility decline has hardly been studied. This
sample consists of approximately 1700 men who would have been in their
prime reproductive years from about 1860 to about 1930. It yields two kinds
of information on the fertility of American men during the fertility
transition.

First, a potentially important source of involuntary childlessness was male
physiology as determined by nutrition and health. A nonlinear relation
between body mass index (BMI) and childlessness was found in which men of
average size were significantly more likely ever to father children than
the extremely thin or fat. No significant relationships were found between
height or BMI and the number of children fathered. Thus, the
BMI-childlessness relation seems to have been based upon the ability of men
to father children rather than voluntary fertility control.

Second, information on occupation suggested a role for knowledge of and
access to relatively new contraceptive techniques. Among these men,
physicians had significantly smaller families, while having probabilities
of childlessness that were statistically identical to those of other men.
This suggests that physicians understood or could obtain methods of
contraception beyond those available to the other men. Such methods have
been proposed based on surveys of the 1920s and 1930s, but this sample
indicates that they may have been used in earlier periods.

Together, this paper suggests roles for both voluntary fertility control
and involuntary childlessness during the fertility transition in the United
States.

Bibliography: Murray, John E. and Bradley A. Lagger. "Involuntary
Childlessness and Voluntary Fertility Control in a Sample of American Men."
Working Paper. April 2000.

Subject: J
Geographical Area: 7
Country/Region: USA
Time Period: 7

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