Fertility Determinants and Economic Uncertainty.

In a developing country like Pakistan where financial and labor markets are immature, trade is not very much open with low per capita income and high output risk shows economic and financial uncertainty by disturbing behavior of saving and portfolios that changes people s' decisions about family size. In this paper ARDL model is used to examine variations in fertility preferences using time series data by looking into statistical relationship between different demographic and economic variables. The result shows that fertility rate is definitelyassociated with infant death rate, participation of female in labor force while adverselylinked with real income, unemployment, inflation and GDP growth rate. High unemployment rates increase insecurities about labor market, while increases in real income motivate people towards luxuries so their fertility rate decreases. In order to reduce fertility rate the Government of Pakistan has to expand immunization programme and family health clinics to improve child's health to reduce infant/child mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]