Labor immigration and long-run welfare in a growth model with heterogenous agents and endogenous labor supply

This paper examines the consequences of labor immigration in an OLG economy in which agents have an elastic labor supply and differ with respect to degrees of altruism and rates of time preference. It focuses on three substantive questions. First, how do immigrants influence the bequest motive of altruistic natives? Second, what impact do immigrants have on the labor supply of natives? Finally, how does immigration affect the long-run welfare of both altruistic and non altruistic natives? Received: 25 November 1999/Accepted: 07 April 2000     

Trajectories of Fertility and Household Composition in the Demographic Profile of the Czech Republic

The household composition matrix is a representation of the demographic structure of households, specific to age groups of household members and household heads. As such, the matrix reflects also the environmental conditions, housing in particular, that mould households' demographic structure. By specifically depicting the presence of children in households, household composition could be viewed as gauging fertility within the context of housing conditions. This stance is examined in an application to Czech census data for the year 1991, at the commencement of an intense process of socio-economic transformation that accompanied the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe. Within this process, housing had an inadvertent impact upon the structure of households in general, and upon fertility decline in particular. By using the standard matrix representation of household composition, correspondence between trajectories of age-specific fertility and household composition emerge throughout the Czech Republic. This correspondence illustrates the potential household composition analysis carries for fertility measurement and estimation in rapidly changing economic environments.     

Bequest division and population growth: A lineal extinction probability approach

This study uses a lineal-extinction-probability-minimization approach proposed by Chu (1991) to study the relation between bequest division and population growth. Using a Markov branching process and “first-degree stochastic dominance” technique, our model's results imply that any specific bequest division, primogeniture or equal divisions, does not necessarily increase or reduce the population growth by itself. Whether the population does grow, or by how much, will be determined by the concurrent social-economic conditions. We find that if all family heads faced an increasing MRTS technology and/or a relatively unfair market chance, then they would tend to choose an unequal division as their optimal bequest policy, and population growth would increase. However, if an equal division was adopted involuntarily by family heads or was enforced by laws, then the population growth might decline. Received: 26 November 1999/Accepted: 26 October 2000     

农村教育与农民的脆弱性——基于河北一个村庄的考察

本文在实地考察的基础上,以河北滦平县某村农户为研究对象,通过典型案例分析讨论了当前我国农村家庭在现行教育体制下的脆弱性及其生计风险。教育导致农户脆弱性的机理在于农户在国家免费教育政策之外所付出的额外成本与大学教育的高成本和高消费以及由我国长期二元经济形成的城乡教育的不平等。     

子女教育与家庭贫困的代际变动

子女教育是影响农村家庭贫困变动的一个重要因素。本文通过对14省区609户农村家庭调查结果分析,发现子女教育有加深父代家庭贫困状况的迹象,子女接受教育程度越高,自身一代家庭摆脱贫困的比例越高,并且能传承下代家庭使其免受贫困;家庭贫困代际变动的教育断裂点为15年(大专教育)。     

中国老年人失能相对成本估计

老年人因失能会产生额外的生活成本,使老年人更容易陷入贫困。文章采用生活水平法对老年人失能的相对成本进行估计,结果表明,单身独居老人和高龄老人失能的相对成本更高;城市老人失能相对成本高于农村,东部高于西部。建议针对失能老年人的相对成本特征,制定更有针对性的老年人福利政策,老龄津贴政策需充分考虑老年人失能的相对成本。     

Mobility, information, and bequest: The “other side” of the equal division puzzle

There is substantial evidence that parental bequests to children are typically equal in the US—a regularity inconsistent with the predictions of standard bequest models. The prior explanation for this puzzle is parents’ desire to signal equal affection given children’s incomplete information of parental preferences. However, parents also have incomplete information regarding children preferences—which has not been considered. Using a strategic bequest framework, we show that when parents have sufficient uncertainty regarding children’s relocation returns, a separating equilibrium where parents reward attentive heirs with larger bequests is precluded. Such uncertainty appears consistent with conditions in the contemporary USA.     

基于logistic模型的外来人口婚姻迁移的影响因素分析——以珠三角某地区为例

婚姻迁移是人口迁移的一个方面,且增多趋势愈见明显。动机研究是人口迁移相对集中的关注问题。但是关于以迁入地为基点对婚姻迁移的影响因素分析相对较少。本文试图以某地区为例,研究其外来人口中婚姻迁移行为发生的影响因素,主要包括个人、户籍、经济、就业和城市适应五大因素,并引入logistic模型对测量变量进行统计分析。结果表明,个人因素对婚姻迁移的贡献最大,除了就业因素外,其他因素的贡献相似。尤其指出的是随着外来人口的城市适应程度提高,婚姻迁移的可能性将会增加。由此说明,外来人口城市生活的再社会化程度将为他们的社会融合奠定基础。     

我国空巢老人家庭状态

据全国第五次人口普查资料 ,本文研究了我国空巢老人年龄性别、户口、婚姻及地区构成 ,探索了空巢老人家庭产生的问题和形成的原因 ,提出了空巢老人家庭生活照料对策和建议。     

农户非农收入的影响因素:对江汉平原5县市的考察

以前对于农户非农活动的研究主要是在对非农行为动机的研究上,还需要对农户非农收入影响因素进行进一步分析。本文在回顾农户非农行为理论和相关研究工作的基础上,利用逐步线性回归模型对农村劳动力非农收入的影响因素进行了分析,得出的结论是劳动力教育程度、非农活动的从事地点和所从事的职业及农户耕地面积对劳动力的非农收入影响显著,并据此提出了相关政策建议。     

Inheritance, land, and capital mobility linked to labour mobility

This paper presents a two-country migration model, following Galor (1986), in which the world population consists of two types individuals. Individuals with a high (low) degree of altruism give to their children a high (low) level of bequest. Production uses three inputs: immobile land, mobile labour, and capital. Capital mobility is linked to labour mobility since individuals move with their inheritance. The model shows that countries are homothetic in the post-migration equilibrium with equal factor prices and equal densities of population. Migration flows are bilateral and the number of each type of migrants is uniquely determined. In some cases, migration leads to a Pareto improvement in both countries. Received: 8 July 1999/Accepted: 7 April 2000     

Saving behaviour and earnings uncertainty: Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey

For the first time, this paper uses a panel data set, the British Household Panel Survey, to analyse saving behaviour in Britain. One objective is to test the precautionary saving hypothesis, according to which households save to self-insure against uncertainty. Our results show that in accordance with this hypothesis, various measures of uncertainty based on earnings variability have a statistically significant effect on households' saving decisions. Moreover, in accordance with the life cycle model, households save more if they expect their financial situation to deteriorate. Received: 15 June 1999/Accepted: 4 January 2001     

Allocation of resources for social services: Israel as a case study

The motives of the enormous growth of state expenditure for social services in advanced industrial societies, is one of the most puzzling questions in social policy analysis. The aim of this article is predicated upon the assumption that there are a few factors which jointly influence the allocation of societies to social services. Various factors which were found relevant to allocation in other studies are examined with regard to their ability to explain allocation for social services in Israel. Along with the traditional indicator of societal allocation, i.e. yearly fiscal expenditures for social services, another variable is suggested to test this societal allocation, namely the creating of new social programs. This new indicator will be explained and will be tested as to how the explanatory factors can predict the establishing of new programs.     

Endogenous fertility in a model with non-dynastic parental altruism

A model of fertility choice is studied in which the utility of parents depends on how much they consume, on how many children they have and on the consumption of their children. Hence, parents are altruistic towards their children, but in a more limited sense than in the much discussed dynastic fertility model presented by Becker and Barro (1988). The concept of a (subgame perfect) bequest equilibrium is used to solve the non-dynastic model considered here. The steady state birth rate is lower in the non-dynastic model than in the Becker-Barro model. However, the key qualitative predictions concerning the dynamic behavior of fertility are strikingly similar in both models. JEL classification: J13, J11, D90. Received August 17, 1995/Accepted October 20, 1996     

“Nothing Hurts the Cause More Than That”

The final season of the television series Veronica Mars was marked by a narrative shift from an apparent investment in supporting feminist values to a virulent attack on US feminism. This shift reproduces several of the tenets central to the discourses of the backlash, including the views that feminism promotes hostility towards men, that it has betrayed women rather than advocating on their behalf, and that feminist liberation comes at a tremendous personal cost, which leaves women miserable and unfulfilled. This essay examines the show's transformation into a backlash text within the context of the pressure reportedly placed on writers and producers to increase ratings in order to avoid cancellation. It argues that because the series's reproduction of backlash rhetoric can be read as reflective of the popular view that feminism is antithetical to the values of the US cultural mainstream, it illustrates the influence of the backlash on US market forces, as well as on US popular culture. It also suggests that, in the process, the series reveals a great deal about the ways in which profit motives intersect with, and possibly override, ideological considerations in the production of popular culture texts.     

The problems of eligibility and endogenous confounders when assessing the mortality impact of a nationwide disease-prevention programme: the case of insecticide-treated nets in Togo

Evaluation of the mortality impact of nationwide disease-prevention efforts is complicated by potential endogeneity: programme recipients may have unobserved characteristics that simultaneously make them both more likely to become recipients and more likely to survive as a result of other health practices. This population-based study assesses the mortality impact of a nationwide programme that distributed insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) to mothers of children aged 9-59 months in Togo. By comparing mortality rates before and after the programme according to households' eligibility status, we demonstrate that a one-time programme that restricts eligibility to households with a surviving child excludes some households with a high risk of child mortality. We then apply simultaneous estimation models to untangle the mortality impact of ITNs from the effects of unobserved confounders and show that among eligible households, living in a household with ITNs significantly reduces mortality for children aged 20-59 months, even after controlling for endogeneity.     

外部性内在化与城镇独生子女父母年老奖励补助政策

有关生育的奖励处罚政策实质上是使生育行为外部性内在化的一种努力。城镇独生子女父母年老奖励补助政策仅是地方性人口与计划生育条例的一项重要规定,尚未取得与农村部分计划生育家庭奖励扶助制度同等重要的地位。利用生育外部性和制度变迁理论,结合地方性条例的规定,分析现行政策难兑现的原因,提出自上而下制度创新的原则和具体建议。     

Relative deprivation and international migration oded stark

This article provides theoretical reasoning and empirical evidence that international migration decisions are influenced by relative as well as absolute income considerations. Potential gains in absolute income through migration are likely to play an important role in households' migration decisions, but international migration by household members who hold promise for success as labor migrants can also be an effective strategy to improve a household's income position relative to others in the household's reference group. The findings reported in this article provide empirical support for the hypothesis that relative deprivation plays a significant role in Mexico-to-U.S. migration decisions. The findings also suggest that this migration is an effective mechanism for achieving income gains in households that send migrants to the U.S. and that households wisely choose as migrants those of their members who are most likely to provide net income gains.     

Growth and inequality: a demographic explanation

This paper investigates the relationship between growth and inequality from a demographic point of view. In an extended model of the accidental bequest with endogenous fertility, we analyze the effects of a decrease in old-age mortality rate on the equilibrium growth rate as well as on the income distribution. We show that the relationship between growth and inequality is at first positive and then may be negative in the process of population aging. The results are consistent with the empirical evidence in some developed countries.

Social security and strategic inter-vivos transfers of social capital

This paper explains public provision of social capital in an overlapping generations model with gerontocracy, without resort to any bequest motive. The old generation has an incentive to provide education and infrastructure because these goods shift the Laffer curve of social security taxation, thereby increasing old-age income in the political equilibrium. The incentive is stronger if population growth is larger. The marginal productivity of social capital in the political equilibrium may exceed or fall short of the marginal productivity of social capital in an efficient allocation.Comments by Ursula Arlt, Tom G. McCarthy, Wolfgang Peters, the participants in seminars at the Universities of Cologne and Dortmund and two anonymous referees are gratefully acknowledged. The usual caveat applies.