Child Endowments and the Quantity and Quality of Children.

It is sufficient to recognize than an increase in the quantity of children raises the cost or shadow price of the quality of children, and vice versa. This was used to explain, among other things, why the observed income elasticity of demand for quality of children is high at the same time that the observed quantity elasticity is low and often even negative. This paper brings together and integrates social interactions and the special relation between quantity and quality. We are able to show that the observed quality income elasticity would be relatively high and the quantity elasticity relatively low and sometimes negative, even if the true underlying income elasticities for quantity and quality were equal and of average value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]