When wages or output decline and expected opportunities worsen, these sorts of investments decline as well,especially in altruistic societies where care resources get reallocated from long-term investment to countering the short-term effects of economic decline and wage squeeze by, for example, attending to the emotional stress of unemployment or compensating for declines in public health expenditures or other public goods. This sort of public disinvestment in human capital and the consequent pressure on the unpaid care sector has been a frequent criticism of structural adjustment (Elson 1995). The same dynamics are at work when fertility rates decline during economic recessions (Sobotka et al.