Fertility-infant mortality interrelationships and the quality of life: an empirical study

The author applies a simultaneous equations model to data from 40 developed and developing countries to determine the interrelationships between fertility and infant mortality and their combined effect on quality of life. "The following empirical results can be summarized: There is overwhelming evidence that the fertility rate has a positive effect on the infant mortality rate in most of the countries, slightly more so in the developing countries. While there is a positive causation running from infant mortality to fertility rates in most of the countries, this phenomenon is more pronounced in the developed...countries. Mutual causation between the fertility and infant mortality rates characterizes most of the countries...[and] the replacement effect of a lost child or infant is greater if the loss affects a male than if it affects a female...."