Fertility and urbanization

• Published in: Cities Vol. 163; p. 106002
• Main Author: Lee, Sanghoon
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.08.2025
• Subjects: Evolutionary view; Fertility; Panel data; Urbanization; D10; R23; Panel data; Fertility; O18; Urbanization; Evolutionary view; D91; J13; Z13
• ISSN: 0264-2751
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cities.2025.106002

Fertility decline has been the subject matter of numerous studies, and this study addresses the issue of the role of urbanization in fertility decline by focusing on the evolutionary view that high population density causes low fertility. Panel data of 266 countries for 1960–2019 are investigated by using various regression techniques such as fixed effects (FE), feasible generalized least squares (FGLS), instrumental variable (IV), quadratic, dynamic GMM, and split-sample estimations to empirically examine the effect of urbanization on fertility. The FE, FGLS, and IV regressions provide strong evidence that urbanization has a negative impact on fertility, while the dynamic GMM and the split-sample regressions partly support the negative effect. Overall, the empirical findings support the negative effect of urbanization on fertility suggested by the evolutionary view. •The linear regressions results of FE, FGLS, and IV models indicate that urbanization has a negative effect on fertility, which is consistent with the theoretical prediction.•The quadratic regression reports the negative sign of the linear term and the positive sign of the quadratic term of urbanization. However, the inflection point is not within the acceptable range, and the curve supports the negative relationship between urbanization and fertility.•The results of the dynamic GMM regression partially confirm the negative effect of urbanization on fertility.•According to the split-sample regression results, the negative relationship between fertility and urbanization holds only for the low income group.