A Research Note on Unconditional Cash Transfers and Fertility in the United States: New Causal Evidence.

As cash transfer policies have gained traction in recent years, interest in how financial resources could impact fertility has also grown. Increasing an individual's purchasing power with additional economic resources, such as those provided in unconditional cash transfers, might better enable parents to meet their fertility and reproductive goals, whether those goals are to become pregnant and give birth or to avoid or terminate pregnancies. In this research note, we provide new experimental evidence of the causal impact of a monthly unconditional cash transfer on fertility-related outcomes for U.S. families with at least one young child and low incomes. We find trends of increased pregnancy after three years but no corresponding impacts on births, miscarriages, or terminations. Our findings might indicate that modest cash transfers to mothers with low incomes in the United States are unlikely to have substantial impacts on fertility.

Duke Scholars

Author Lisa A. Gennetian Sanford School of Public Policy