Fertility and Investments in Human Capital: Estimates of the Consequences of Imperfect Fertility Control in Malaysia

In this paper, we describe and utilize methods to estimate theconsequences for children's schooling and birthweight of the exogenousvariability in the supply of births in one low income country, Malaysia. Themethod utilizes information on contraceptive techniques employed by couples toestimate directly the technology of reproduction and provides a means ofdisentangling the biological and demand factors that contribute to the variationin fertility across couples under a regime of imperfect fertility control. Ourresults suggest that imperfect fertility control significantly influences boththe average schooling attainment and birthweight of children in Malaysia, withcouples having above-average propensities to conceive reporting higher levels ofactual fertility, significantly lower expectations of and actual schoolingattainment for their children, and lower birthweight children, on average, dueto smaller intervals between births.