Causes and consequences of fertility in the U.S. and Ghana: A spatial econometric approach

This dissertation examines the causes of fertility variations in both Ghana and the U.S. as well as the impacts of family size on children in Ghana. It consists of three chapters. Chapter One examines the impact of family size on child malnutrition outcomes in Ghana. Chapter Two explores the empirical evidence in support of various explanations for fertility rate variations among women in Ghana. The third chapter investigates the impact on women's fertility rates in the U.S. when men spend time in child care duties at home.;Chapter One examines the impact of the number of household children on child malnutrition outcomes using data from the Ghana Demographic and Health Surveys for 1988 to 2008. To control for potential endogeneity and underlying spatial correlation, I use instrumental variable estimation and a spatial filtering technique. The results of the empirical estimation suggest that the number of household children is negatively correlated with child malnutrition outcomes in the short-term but not in the long run.;Chapter Two examines the impact of socioeconomic factors, contraceptive use and social networking systems on fertility variations among women in Ghana using data from the Ghana Demographic Health Surveys from 1988 to 2008. In addition to OLS estimation, I use a spatial lag regression model to examine whether women in close proximity to each other interact with and influence each other's fertility behavior. I find evidence for socioeconomic, contraceptive use and social networking factors as determinants of women's fertility rates in Ghana. However, women who use contraceptives appear to have more children than woman who do not. This may be the result of some underlying reverse causality where women who already have a large number of children use contraceptives to slow down their fertility.;Chapter Three investigates the influence of fathers' time spent in childcare on women's fertility rates in the U.S. Sacerdote, Feyrer and Stern (2008) claim that more time spent by fathers in childcare results in higher fertility. I test their hypothesis using state-level data from the U.S Census Bureau, National Vital Statistics Report and the American Heritage Time Use Survey. The results of the analysis do not support Sacerdote, Feyrer and Stern's (2008) hypothesis for the U.S.