Forging linkages between complexity of productive capabilities and woman fertility: fresh evidence from low- and middle-income countries

Recently, interest in production capabilities as an integral part of economic development has revived. Fertility, an important component of population dynamics, remains a vibrant research topic in the empirical areas of economic development and public health. Examining the connection between productive capabilities and fertility outcomes is important. In this study, we propose the hypothesis that productive capabilities alter fertility choice. We rely on two indices of economic complexity (ECI+ and the original ECI) that try to measure productive capabilities indirectly by examining the mix of products exported by countries. Through a system GMM dynamic panel analysis conducted on a sample of low-and middle-income countries, we show that an improvement in the complexity of productive capabilities leads to a decrease in fertility rates. Our results survive a battery of robustness checks.