The economics of international child adoption: An analysis of adoptions by U.S. parents

The paper develops a two-period model of international child adoption by considering decision-making by a poor household and derive a number of testable predictions: the negative effect of income and the positive effect of household size on adoption. We provide supporting evidence based on a panel of U.S. adoptions from 178 countries during the last three decades. Our findings suggest that, on average, a one hundred-dollar increase in real per capita income in a sending nation reduces U.S. adoptions by three cases while a ten-million increase in child population raises adoptions by 18 cases.