David N. Weil is James and Merryl Tisch Professor of Economics at Brown University. In the United States and most other developed countries, birth rates have fallen well below the level needed to keep populations stable without large-scale immigration. Many of the themes in today’s fertility debates are not new. In this talk, Professor Weil traces how arguments over fertility have evolved over time, examines the real economic effects of low fertility—which are far more modest than current rhetoric implies—and evaluates the potential effect of pro-natalist policies in shaping American women’s fertility decisions.

The Martin H. Crego Lecture in Economics is sponsored by the Economics Department, and co-sponsored by the History Department,  the Political Science Department, the Science, Technology, and Society Program, and the Women, Feminist, and Queer Studies Program.

Campus community only, please.