An urban legend?! Power rationing, fertility and its effects on mothers

Fetzer, Thiemo, Pardo Reinoso, Oliver Enrique and Shanghavi, Amar (2013) An urban legend?! Power rationing, fertility and its effects on mothers. CEP Discussion Papers (CEPDP1247). London School of Economics and Political Science. Centre for Economic Performance, London, UK.

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Abstract

This paper answers the question whether extreme power rationing can induce changes in human fertility and thus, generate “mini baby booms”. We study a period of extensive power rationing in Colombia that lasted for most of 1992 and see whether this has increased births in the subsequent year, exploiting variation from a newly constructed measure of the extent of power rationing. We find that power rationing increased the probability that a mother had a baby by 4 percent and establish that this effect is permanent as mothers who had a black out baby were not able to adjust their total long-run fertility. Exploiting this variation, we show that women who had a black-out baby find themselves in worse socio-economic conditions more than a decade later, highlighting potential social costs of unplanned motherhood.

Item Type:	Monograph (Discussion Paper)
Official URL:	https://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/discussion...
Additional Information:	© 2013 The Author(s)
Divisions:	Economics Centre for Economic Performance
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions
JEL classification:	J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics > J13 - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics > J16 - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination O - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development > O18 - Regional, Urban, and Rural Analyses H - Public Economics > H4 - Publicly Provided Goods > H41 - Public Goods
Date Deposited:	22 Feb 2024 10:33
Last Modified:	11 Dec 2024 19:53
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/121786

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