The Journal of Population Studies

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This study aims to analyze the relation between men's contributions to child-care and the number of children theoretically. In previous studies,it was assumed that men don't spend time raising children.But,if it is assumed that men participate, it is likely that an increase in the relative wages of women increases the men's time devoted to child-raising activities and the women's time devoted to labor-market activities,causing the number of children to increase.However, this may occur under certain conditions.We will try to clear and specify these conditions. Our model follows Becker (1965), but we divide the time devoted to child-raising activities between men and women. Using our model, we analyze the effect of the women's wage on the men's time devoted to child-raising activities, the women's time devoted to labor-market activities, and the demand for children. Our model shows that the effect strongly depends on wage differences between men and women. When the differences are large, it is hardly possible that all these three variables increase. When the differences are very small,and moreover,when the elasticity of substitution between men's time and women's time is large, it is likely that all three variables increase. Therefore, in order to increase fertility, while men's working conditions should be improved to increase the elasticity, the differences must necessarily be reduced.

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Considering that existing estimates of world historical population are based on fragile evidence,a new method using city population is proposed here to further clarify the past population trend. Different from "urban population" which keeps increasing, city population defined as top x cities'population is found to be a stable indicator in proportion to the total population. At the global level, the city population ratio is stable since 1950 to the present and in the country/regional level it was stable until the onset of modern times (around the 19^<th> century). Assuming the stability of city population ratio, the total population of the world was calculated for the past 2000 years.The result shows the discontinuous trend of population both globally and regionally and a relatively low figure for medieval European population. The stability of the city population ratio can be explained by the generalized rank-size rule by which the total population is the function of the top city population, slope of the rank-size distribution and number of the communities.

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