The Dynamics of Gender Norms and Fertility Decline

ABSTRACT

This paper models fertility as the outcome of gender‐biased technological progress interacting with endogenous social norms governing childcare. When rising female wages outpace norm adjustment, the inherited norm makes reallocating childcare toward fathers costly, so mothers bear a disproportionate burden and the shadow price of children rises. In cross‐country data, fertility falls faster where women's relative standing rises, especially where norms are tighter or more rigid. Calibrated to South Korea (1976–2016), the model shows that strong, slow‐adjusting norms deepen the decline. Despite smaller short‐run effects, male childcare subsidies yield larger long‐run gains than female subsidies by accelerating convergence to egalitarian norms.