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This paper examines fertility differentials by income among Mexican Americans, taking these problems as points of departure. The paper first considers alternative hypotheses relevant to the income-fertility relations. Then it proposes a decomposition of the income variable as a preliminary strategy for dealing with the problem of measuring income posed by the economic theory. Finally, it examines the relations between the income components and fertility, as well as their interaction with other variables, and discuss the results in terms of their implications for the economic theory of family formation. The analysis of the relations between social status income and relative income and fertility is based on data from the 1969 Austin, Texas Family Survey, which consisted of a sample of 348 Mexican American couples, married three years or more, in which the wife was no older than 35, married once, and the husband was no older than 50. The unusual restrictions on duration of marriage were made in order to concentrate on that stage in the family life cycle when couples would have had a reasonable opportunity to have had children and possibly to have considered family limitation.