Fertility Choice, Gender Differential Labor Efforts and Economic Development: Empirical Evidence from Taiwan

• Main Authors: Che-Chuan Yeh, 葉哲全
• Other Authors: Pei-chien Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/91903953579716944928

碩士 === 淡江大學 === 產業經濟學系碩士班 === 95 === The phenomenon of declining fertility rate has been observed in Taiwan, one of the newly industrialized countries. To understand the reason behind, this thesis applied cointegration methods to estimate and test the time series data on fertility choice behavior, labor efforts (female and male labor force participation) and per capita output in Taiwan, over the period from 1951-2005. The results show that there exists a long run relationship among these four variables and both labor efforts contribute to economic growth. Even though the results indicate the rising fertility rate will deteriorate economic performance, it hasn’t become a burden yet. Also the results of employing vector error-correction models (VECM), variance decomposition and impulse functions have showed that fertility is endogenous in the system and female labor force participation is important to explain for the economic growth and declining fertility rate.