Democracy and fertility

Abstract

This research is an empirical assessment of the causal relationship between democracy and birth rates. The question under study is whether a country is more likely to experience fertility declines as it becomes more democratic, holding the other country's characteristics constant. This study goes beyond the existing literature to establish a causal relationship between democratization and fertility declines. To establish a causal relation we adopt two complementary strategies. The first is to include country fixed effects in the estimation and the second is to use an instrumental variables approach. The results suggest a robust negative causal relationship between democracy and birth rates. We interpret the effect of political rights on fertility as stemming from a decrease in overall societal risk, which diminishes as political institutions mature.