Abstract
The idea that economic developments can affect births is an old one, going back to Malthus'Essay on Populationin the early 19th century. In more recent times, the economic analysis of fertility was resurrected by Becker (1960) and developed by Easterlin (1980), Willis (1973), Becker (1981) and others. This article reports on an application of this economic approach to the analysis of fluctuations in births in Britain during the post-war period, building on previous work by De Cooman, Ermisch and Joshi (1987).