Build Baby Build is a provocative title for an economics paper. It also accurately describes the policy decision-makers should adopt to address the role housing affordability plays in falling fertility rates. The paper, subtitled How Housing Shapes Fertility, captures the research results of Benjamin K. Couillard, a PhD Candidate with the Department of Economics, who investigated the role of housing prices, location and family size using data from the U.S. Census and the American Community Survey. In his analysis of the data, Couillard uses a structural model to understand the relationship between housing costs and fertility. Building on existing quasi-experimental work, his approach directly accounts for the differing trade-offs that large and small families make when choosing where to live, a phenomenon economists call sorting.
“Housing and fertility are jointly determined because large and small families sort into different locations based on the number of children they have – or want to have – and housing costs,” he said.
Couillard’s research is a matter of immediate concern. According to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the fertility rate in the United States is 1.62 children per woman while the population replacement rate would be 2.1. [Read more…]
