An empirical test of the effect of social security on fertility in the United States.

The author attempts to estimate the effects of the social security program on fertility in the United States from 1933 to 1974. A fertility model based on the choice theoretic calculus is presented, "with the distinguishing feature that the childbearing cohort's utility depends on own consumption as well as consumption of their retired parents. In this framework, changes in social security affect household income, and thus fertility, directly, as well as indirectly due to substitution of social security for private intergenerational transfers."