Population aging and endogenous economic growth

We investigate the consequences of population aging for long-run economic growth perspectives. Our framework incorporates endogenous growth models and semi-endogenous growth models as special cases. We show that (1) increases in longevity have a positive impact on per capita output growth, (2) decreases in fertility have a negative impact on per capita output growth, (3) the positive longevity effect dominates the negative fertility effect in case of the endogenous growth framework, and (4) population aging fosters long-run growth in the endogenous growth framework, while its effect depends on the relative change between fertility and mortality in the semi-endogenous growth framework.     

Endogenous fertility and human capital in a Schumpeterian growth model

This study develops a scale-invariant Schumpeterian growth model with endogenous fertility and human capital accumulation. The model features two engines of long-run economic growth: R&D-based innovation and human capital accumulation. One novelty of this study is endogenous fertility, which negatively affects the growth rate of human capital. Given this growth-theoretic framework, we characterize the dynamics of the model and derive comparative statics of the equilibrium growth rates with respect to structural parameters. As for policy implications, we analyze how patent policy affects economic growth through technological progress, human capital accumulation, and endogenous fertility. In summary, we find that strengthening patent protection has (a) a positive effect on technological progress, (b) a negative effect on human capital accumulation through a higher rate of fertility, and (c) an ambiguous overall effect on economic growth.     

Learning-by-doing,population pressure,and the theory of demographic transition

The present paper discusses the long-run effects of two interdependent relations between economic and population growth. According to a frequently used formulation of the population-push hypothesis, learning-by-doing effects in production lead to increasing returns to scale and, therefore, to a positive correlation between economic and population growth. In accordance to the theory of demographic transition the population growth rate initially increases with rising income levels and then declines. Regarding this relationship, the existence and stability of a low-income equilibrium and a high-income equilibrium will be shown in a neoclassical growth model. Under plausible conditions a demo-economic transition from the first to the second steady-state takes place. The result yields a meaningful interpretation of the population-push hypothesis, which is consistent with the empirical findings on the correlation between economic and population growth. Received March 8, 1996 / Accepted October 24, 1996     

Immigration and the stable population model

This paper reports on work aimed at extending stable population theory to include immigration. Its central finding is that, as long as fertility is below replacement, a constant number and age distribution of immigrants (with fixed fertility and mortality schedules) lead to a stationary population. Neither the level of the net reproduction rate nor the size of the annual immigration affects this conclusion; a stationary population eventually emerges. How this stationary population is created is studied, as is the generational distribution of the constant annual stream of births and of the total population. It is also shown that immigrants and their early descendants may have fertility well above replacement (as long as later generations adopt and maintain fertility below replacement), and the outcome will still be a long-run stationary population.     

The effects of motherhood timing on career path

This paper estimates the effects of motherhood timing on female career path, using biological fertility shocks to instrument for age at first birth. Motherhood delay leads to a substantial increase in earnings of 9% per year of delay, an increase in wages of 3%, and an increase in work hours of 6%. Supporting a human capital story, the advantage is largest for college-educated women and those in professional and managerial occupations. Panel estimation reveals both fixed wage penalties and lower returns to experience for mothers, suggesting that a “mommy track” is the source of the timing effect.     

城市工资上涨、劳动力转移与投资拉动增长方式——基于中国地级城市面板数据的分析

改革开放后,中国以高投资率带动了城市经济的高速增长,但随着农村剩余劳动力存量的不断减少,劳动力供给增长开始跟不上高投资带来的劳动力需求的增长,城市经济的发展正面临着工资加速上涨、投资的产出与就业效应不断降低的挑战。文章利用2004～2009年中国地级城市面板数据进行实证分析,结果显示,城市工资上涨对劳动力供给的拉力是递减的,而对劳动力需求的抑制作用却是递增的;劳动力市场均衡的比较静态分析结果显示,投资的工资上涨效应在递增,而投资的产出与就业效应在递减,因此城市工资上涨是必然趋势。此外,工资上涨对外商直接投资有明显抑制作用,在国内外双重压力下,中国继续实行投资拉动的增长方式已不是明智的选择。     

Child care workers' wages: New evidence on returns to education, experience, job tenure and auspice

Child care workers receive low hourly pay, modest returns to education, experience and job tenure, and have high rates of turnover. These stylized facts have caused analysts to characterize child care workers as secondary labour market participants. We use Canadian data to challenge this characterization and to examine the disputed effects of auspice (non-profit vs. for-profit status) on wages. In contrast to Mocan and Viola (1997), improved controls for the differential availability of resources and firm size do not make the positive wage effects experienced by workers in non-profit day care centres disappear. Received: 7 February 2000/Accepted: 1 August 2001     

Adieu Rabenmutter—culture,fertility, female labour supply,the gender wage gap and childcare

This paper studies the effect of cultural attitudes on childcare provision, fertility, female labour supply and the gender wage gap. Cross-country data show that fertility, female labour force participation and childcare provision are positively correlated with each other, while the gender wage gap seems to be negatively correlated with these variables. The paper presents a model with endogenous fertility, female labour supply and childcare choices driven by cultural attitudes which fits these facts. There may exist multiple equilibria: one with zero childcare provision, low fertility and female labour supply and high wage gap and one with high childcare provision, high fertility and female labour supply and low wage gap.     

Malthus to modernity: wealth,status, and fertility in England, 1500–1879

A key challenge to theories of long-run economic growth has been linking the onset of modern growth with the move to modern fertility limitation. A notable puzzle for these theories is that modern growth in England began around 1780, 100 years before there was seemingly any movement to limit fertility. Here we show that the aggregate data on fertility in England before 1880 conceals significant declines in the fertility of the middle and upper classes earlier. These declines coincide with the Industrial Revolution and are of the character predicted by some recent theories of long-run growth.     

Land use as a mediating factor of fertility in the Amazon

Despite implications for both humans and the environment, a scant body of research examines fertility in forest frontiers. This study examines the fertility–environment association using empirical data from Ecuadorian Amazon between 1980 and 1999. Fertility dramatically declined during this period, and our empirical models suggest that households’ relationship to land partially explains this decline. Controlling for known fertility determinants such as age and education, women in households lacking land titles experienced a 27 % higher birth rate than did women in households with land titles. This suggests insecure land tenure was associated with higher fertility. Furthermore, each additional hectare of new pasture was associated with a 16 % higher birth rate, suggesting the potential role of a more stable and lucrative income source in supporting additional births. Findings from this research can help inform strategic policies to address sustainable development in frontier environments.     

Endogenous fertility,mortality and growth

Economic and demographic outcomes are determined jointly in a choice-theoretic model of fertility, mortality and capital accumulation. There is an endogenous population of reproductive agents who belong to dynastic families of overlapping generations connected through altruism. In addition to choosing savings and births, parents may reduce (infant) deaths by incurring expenditures on health-care which is also provided by the government. A generalised production technology accounts for long-run endogenous growth with short-run transitional dynamics. The analysis yields testable time series and cross-section implications which accord with the empirical evidence on the relationship between demography and development. Received: 22 April 1996 / Accepted: 2 April 1998     

Religion,socialization, and fertility

Longitudinal data from a large .sample of Wisconsin men and women are used to examine the effects on fertility of religious and secular socialization, including farm upbringing. Analyses of children ever born (CEB) and of parity progression show that current religious choice is more important in explaining fertility than is religion of orientation or denomination of secondary school. The effects of current and background religion are additive, and the effect of current religion is the same for men as for women at each parity progression. Catholic religious background affects fertility primarily by increasing the likelihood of having a third or fourth child; its indirect effects on fertility operate through religious schooling and current religious affiliation. Unlike religious background, the positive influence of farm background on fertility persists among men and women, even when current farm employment is controlled.     

A model of voluntary childlessness

Demographers and sociologists have studied why women remain childless for more than two decades; however, this specific choice of zero fertility has not interested economists. Permanent childlessness, in developed countries, can concern up to 30 % of the women in a cohort. Childlessness rates can be positively related to average fertility for some cohorts of women. This paper provides an explanation for this using an endogenous fertility model where individuals have different preferences for children. The main mechanism considered goes through the intergenerational evolution of preferences: I show that a reduction in the gender wage gap, or an increase in the fixed cost of becoming a parent, has a negative effect on both fertility and childlessness. The reduction of childlessness is due to a composition effect: small families shrink more than larger families, and this reduces childlessness.     

Social Class Differentials During Fertility Decline: England and Wales Revisited

This paper reviews the relationship between landholdings and fertility. Two dimensions of land are identified as salient for fertility behaviour: size of operational holdings and land ownership. It is suggested that these two dimensions and the resulting income streams have disparate effects on fertility. Size of holdings is assumed to have a positive influence on fertility due to the greater labour demands of larger holdings, while land ownership is posited to exert a negative long-term effect because of the increase in old-age security associated with the income returns to equity. In addition to these effects on the demand for children, landholding is also thought to influence the supply of children. A systematic review of the literature finds support for the impact of both dimensions of landholding on fertility preferences, contraceptive behaviour, the proximate determinants and fertility. Both the demand and supply of children appear to be influenced by landholdings. The observed regularities suggest the need for further research on this connection, not the abandonment of this line of inquiry.     

Social class and workers’ rent, 1983–2001

Sociologists and economists continue to seek explanations for the growth of earnings inequality since the late 1970s. In this article, we draw upon the structural tradition of labor market analysis in sociology in order evaluate the conjecture that selective rent destruction is a source of the recent increase in earnings inequality. In empirical analysis of the Outgoing Rotation Groups of the Current Population Surveys from 1983 to 2001, we demonstrate that (1) the earnings of workers at the bottom of the class distribution have declined relative to the earnings of those at the top and (2) the variance of wage premia associated with employment in alternative industries has declined relatively more for those at the bottom of the class distribution. Adopting the position from both the sociology and labor economics literatures that these industry wage premia are reasonable measures of industry rents, we conclude that the results support the rent destruction conjecture and, by implication, that structural models of labor markets can explain some of the increase in earnings inequality.     

Asymptotic implications of fluctuating nuptiality and fertility considering both sexes together

In this paper we have suggested a procedure of measuring population change which takes into account fluctuating sequences of nuptiality and fertility schedules as they reflect a population’s response pattern to its changing socioeconomic conditions. Through numerical experiments, the two-sex population model of cyclical change, which considers the interaction between sexes through marriage, is seen to converge to an asymptotic stability. The advantage of such a convergence is to enable comparative investigations, in terms of a set of asymptotic parameters, of rather complex series of nuptiality and fertility changes and their implications for short-run oscillation in population structure as well as for long-run population growth.     

生育水平、性别偏好和出生性别比——兼论出生性别比的监测方法

本研究以马-冯-陈模型为定性基础,认为一定人口的出生性别比并非固定不变,而是受到生育水平的影响。当无性别偏好时,生育水平主要通过改变不同孩次占出生人口比例的方式影响出生性别比;当有性别偏好时,生育水平既影响不同孩次占总出生人口的比例,又影响不同孩次的出生性别比,从而对总出生性别比产生影响。对于没有性别偏好和性别选择行为的人口,生育水平变化是引起出生性别比波动的主要原因。有性别选择行为时,生育水平变化对出生性别比的影响较小,性别选择行为是出生性别比异常的主要原因。监测以"曾生子女孩次和性别次序"为条件划分的人群,可以有效而便捷地判断出生性别比变化趋势。     

Equality and fertility in the kibbutz

The kibbutz' quest for equality makes a member's consumption independent of his contribution to production, and the kibbutz itself responsible for almost all childrearing expenses. This fundamental departure from the standard organization of economic life of course affects fertility. We find that a parent's predicted wage (as determined by the parent's individual characteristics) has a smaller positive effect on fertility in the city than in the kibbutz, and that a parent's education has a negative effect on fertility in the city and either a smaller negative effect or no effect in the kibbutz.Correspondence to Leif Danziger.We thank the referees and Alessandro Cigno for helpful comments. Leif Danziger acknowledges the financial support from the Faculty of Arts, York University.     

Land,Fertility, and the Population Establishment

Attempts to demonstrate the dependence of fertility decline in the Third World on radical change have often depended on simplistic statistical analyses. Here some of the data used to explore the relationship between fertility, and land size and ownership, are re-examined. It is concluded that the land-fertility hypotheses of Stokes and Schutjer are not supported by the evidence, but that such analyses are inherently inconclusive and ambiguous. Instead, an understanding of the wider institutional context is called for. The Population Establishment – foreign and international donors supporting population programmes and research – recruits an intelligentsia to validate its activities. The philosophy of this intelligentsia is examined and rejected through an analysis of ideas it derives from the World Fertility Survey and the Matlab family planning project. It is concluded that the Establishment perpetuates rapid population growth by legitimizing unpopular and elitist governments, and by misleading them to believe that fertility decline can, indeed, occur in a political economy of inequality and injustice.     

Pay-as-you-go social security and endogenous fertility in a neoclassical growth model

This paper theoretically studies how unfunded pay-as-you-go social security affects economic growth, the fertility rate, and welfare in a neoclassical growth model. In addition, this paper considers a more general form of child-rearing cost, which is a mixture of time and money. The first observation is that whether the fertility rate increases or not by the expansion of the pay-as-you-go social security depends on (1) the size of the monetary child-rearing cost relative to the time spent on child-rearing and (2) the current fertility and interest rate in laissez faire. The second observation is that income per worker can increase by an expansion in pay-as-you-go social security when the output elasticity of capital is sufficiently small and the payroll tax rate is high. The last finding is that welfare can be improved even though capital is underaccumulated in an economy.