Richard A. Easterlin

TL;DR: The 1976 Pennsylvania school economic model of fertility behavior as discussed by the authors was proposed as an alternative to the "Chicago-Columbia" approach that dominates the current work on fertility economics, and the major thesis of the Pennsylvania model is that in order to understand the variety of real world fertility behavior models of fertility determination must be expanded to include: determinants of family preferences for consumption children and fertility regulation and factors related to the fecundity or reproductive capacity of women.

TL;DR: The existing state of knowledge does not warrant any clear-cut generalization as to the effect of population growth on economic development in today's less developed areas as discussed by the authors, and actual evidence on the association between growth rates of population and per capita income does not point to any uniform conclu sion, though the true relationship may be obscured in a simple two-variable comparison.

TL;DR: Easterlin and Crimmins as discussed by the authors present and test a fertility theory that has gained increasing attention over the last decade, a "supply-demand theory" that integrates economic and sociological approaches to fertility determination.

TL;DR: Men are more likely than women to fulfill their material goods and family life aspirations; their satisfaction in these domains is correspondingly higher; and so too is their overall happiness as mentioned in this paper.

TL;DR: The authors found that over the life cycle aspirations for material goods grow commensurately with consumer wealth, but aspirations for marriage and the number and quality of children do not change much.