We explore the mechanisms driving the negative relationship between parents' schooling and fertility. Brazilian data demonstrate strong negative effects of women's schooling on fertility over the first eight years of schooling. We observe no increase in women's labor supply, however, in spite of rapidly rising wages, suggesting that reservation wages rise as fast as market wages over this range. We find strong effects of parental schooling on children's schooling and survival. We conclude that the effects of early years of schooling on fertility work primarily through increased investments in child qualify, with only a minor role played by rising women's wages.

David Lam is Professor of Economics and Director of the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan. Suzanne Duryea is a consultant economist at the Inter-American Development Bank. The paper has benefitted from the comments of Ricardo Paes de Barros, Eduardo Rios Neto, Guilherme Sedlacek, and two anonymous referees. Support for this research was provided by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NICHD), the Rockefeller Foundation's Research Program on Women's Status and Fertility, the Social Science Research Council, and. the Program for International Partnerships of the University of Michigan. The data used in this article can he obtained beginning May, 1999 through April 2002 from David Lam, Dept. of Economics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109.

© 2002 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

US ISSN 0022-166X

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