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Social Economics pp 77–89Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Fertility

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Abstract

At the aggregate level, human reproduction is the ultimate source of an economic system’s labour input and of the consumers who constitute the principal destination of the economy’s output. At the individual level, children are an important source of satisfaction that compete with alternatives for the limited parental resources of time, energy and money available. Despite this, reproductive behaviour has traditionally been omitted from economic theorizing, and even in the past three decades has gained only a marginal foothold.

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Authors
  1. Richard A. Easterlin
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Editor information

John Eatwell Murray Milgate Peter Newman

Copyright information

© 1989 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Easterlin, R.A. (1989). Fertility. In: Eatwell, J., Milgate, M., Newman, P. (eds) Social Economics. The New Palgrave. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19806-1_13

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