Land tenure, population, and long-run growth

This paper brings together the development literature on land tenure with current research on population and long-run growth. Landowners make a decision between fixed rent, fixed wage, and sharecropping contracts to hire tenants to operate their land. The choice of tenure contract affects the share of output going to tenants, and within a simple unified growth model, this affects the relative price of food and therefore fertility. Fixed wage contracts elicit the lowest fertility rate and fixed rent contracts the highest, with sharecropping as an intermediate case. The implications of this for long-run growth depend on the assumptions one makes about scale effects in the aggregate economy. With increasing returns to scale, as in several models of innovation, fixed rent contracts imply higher growth through a market size effect. Without such increasing returns, though, fixed rent contracts reduce output per capita through a depressing effect on accumulation.     

Pension reform and labor market incentives

This paper investigates how parametric reform in a pay-as-you-go pension system with a tax–benefit link affects retirement and work incentives of prime-age workers. We find that postponed retirement tends to harm incentives of prime-age workers in the presence of a tax–benefit link, thereby creating a policy trade-off in stimulating aggregate labor supply. We show how several popular reform scenarios are geared either towards young or old workers or, indeed, both groups under appropriate conditions. We characterize the excess burden of pension insurance and show how it depends on the supply elasticities of both decision margins and the effective tax rates.     

Population growth,farmland, and the long-run standard of living

This paper studies the natural-resources element in the theory of population growth over the very long run. In the context of the stock of land and Malthusian crises in earlier times, the model shows how resources have become more available rather than more scarce, even as population and income have increased.The paper sketches a mechanism which, added to the Malthusian system, leads to entirely different conclusions than does the Malthusian system. Using the illustration of food and land, change in knowledge and hence in the stock of resources is made a function of the stock of knowledge and the price of resources. The speed of adjustment depends on the economic and social climate for the development of new knowledge. Population growth first raises food and land prices, which then stimulate the creation of new resources, eventually leading to less scarcity of resources and lower prices than originally prevailed.That is, population growth creates new problems which in the short run constitute additional burdens which, in the longer run, lead to new developments that leave people better off than if the problems had never arisen.This paper benefitted from being presented in earlier draft at a Population Association of America meeting, to the Economic History workshop at the University of Illinois, and to a seminar of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population in New Delhi. We appreciate valuable comments on earlier drafts from Stanley Engerman, E. L. Jones, William McNeill, and two anonymous referees. Gunter Steinmann acknowledges financial support from the Volkswagen Foundation and a travel grant from Fulbright Commission.     

Immigration and county employment growth

Prior literature has found that immigrants have no effect on the wages and employment of natives. However, this literature has not accounted for the possibility that immigrants contribute to employment growth in the areas where they locate. Research on internal migration has found that internal migrants contribute to local area employment growth. In this paper I compare the effects of natives and immigrants on county employment. Results show that the overall immigrant population contributes more to increases in employment than the overall native population. Recent immigrants and recent internal in-movers have similar effects on employment growth. The net contribution of immigrants to employment growth is confined to nonmanufacturing employment.     

Population growth,age structure,and age-specific productivity

Motivated by empirical evidence that fluctuations in age structure affect relative wages across age groups, this paper asks whether there is a steady-state age distribution that maximizes the lifetime wages of a representative worker. The paper proves the surprising result that in a pure labor economy with any constant returns technology, a uniform age distribution minimizes lifetime wages. Skewed age distributions, generated by either positive or negative population growth rates, generate unambiguously higher lifetime wages than a stationary population, in spite of possible reductions in per capita output in every period. The presence of non-labor factors complicates, but does not necessarily reverse, this result. The paper relates the beneficial effects of higher rates of population growth on lifetime wages in a pure labor economy with imperfect substitutability across age groups to the benefits of population growth that appear in overlapping-generation consumption loan models with intergenerational transfers.A previous version of this paper was presented at the Economic Demography Workshop at the 1988 meetings of the Population Association of America. Helpful comments from Mark Berger, Theodore Bergstrom, Ronald Lee, Hal Varian, and Robert Willis are acknowledged.     

Population growth, age structure, and environmental impact

We develop and use a simulation model that considers sustainability on several levels by calculating production, consumption, investment, population growth/change, and environmental pollution less environmental quality upgrading investment. Our model allows us to consider population's impact on per capita consumption as well as the social interdependencies among populations, per capita consumption, and technology. Under certain population growth scenarios we find some countries ultimately consume less pollution, and less pollution is consumed on a system-wide basis. We arrive at this apparently counterintutive result because: (1) we explicitly model the decision to invest in environmental quality upgrading; and (2) we consider the impact of population age structure on investment, not only the impact of total population and population growth on total consumption.     

[The change of the population age structure and employment].]

The age structure of the population and its impact on employment in China is studied. The author notes that the demographic transition has occurred rapidly and that changes in the age structure have created employment problems in various regions of the country. Data are from official Chinese sources. The impact of changes in the age structure on employment over the next 30 years is considered.     

Cohort,age, and period effects upon the employment of white females: Evidence for 1957–1968

The net effects of birth cohort, age, and period upon the employment of white women, 1957–1968, are estimated by a regression analysis of data from the Social Security Administration’s continuous work history file. By conceptualizing period-specific effects as those associated with the business cycle, we avoid multicollinearity and succeed in performing an analysis faithful to the cohort concerns usual in fertility analysis and to the macroeconomic concerns usual in employment studies. The age pattern of employment and the pattern of intercohort employment change are examined in some detail. The long-run (cohort) trend of increasing white female employment is compared with the estimated (short-run) effects attributable to the business cycle, and it is found that, while both are significant, the former exerted a stronger effect in the 1957–1968 period.     

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     

Optimal age of retirement and population growth

The purpose of this paper is to study intergenerational optimal resources sharing when the social planer can choose the retirement age in addition to consumptions and investment. We use the extension of the Diamond analysis by Hu [1979] that incorporates endogenous retirement age. We found that the optimal retirement age is an increasing function of the population growth rate if the elasticity of substitution of old agents' labor for young agents' labor is lower than one. In the millian case, when the size of a population does not matter, and when the elasticity of substitution of old agents' labor for young agents' labor is strictly higher than one, the optimal retirement age is a decreasing function of the population growth rate. In the benthamite case, the change in the optimal retirement age is indeterminate. Received: 19 February 1999/Accepted: 27 February 2001 All correspondence to Bertrand Crettez. We would like to thank Jean-Pierre Vidal for very helpful comments on an earlier draft. An anonymous referee provided insightful comments on a previous version of this paper. Responsible editor: Alessandro Cigno.     

家庭养老需求与家庭养老功能弱化的张力及其弥合

人口老龄化是当前中国社会所面临的重要挑战之一。一方面,老年人的特征和人性本能共同决定了人们对家庭养老需求十分强烈;另一方面,家庭结构变迁和人们生活方式的变化导致家庭养老功能逐步弱化。两者之间的张力造就了当前中国社会所特有的家庭养老困境。如何弥合二者之间的张力需要建构家庭和社会联动性的居家养老模式,应发挥各方优势,整合资源,破解家庭养老困境。     

Child care, women's employment, and child outcomes

This paper reviews the evidence on the impact of child care and maternal employment in the pre-school years on child outcomes. This topic has long been of interest to economists, developmental psychologists, and scholars from other disciplines, and has been the focus of increased attention in recent years, as research has provided additional evidence about the processes of development in the earliest days, weeks, and years of life.¹  In this paper, I review the evidence on two broad sets of questions: what we know about the potential benefits of early intervention child care programs, and what we know about the effects (whether positive or negative) of maternal employment and child care in the first years of life. The evidence reviewed in this paper suggests that we now know a good deal about both sets of questions. But, this review also suggests that there are important gaps in our knowledge that future work by economists could fruitfully address. Received: 9 December 1999/Accepted: 20 September 2000     

整合与综合化——香港养老服务体系改革的新趋势及其借鉴

近两年来,随着老龄程度的加深和养老新问题的出现,在对既往服务体系的全面反思的基础上,香港福利署对养老服务体系进行了调整和改革。强调回归社区、突显养老机构的特殊职能和整合资源、实现福利服务综合化成为这次政策调整的突出特点。本文试图分析这些特点在老年社区服务、机构服务和发展性服务上的体现,希望对改革中的我国老年福利服务体制有所借鉴。     

我国人口就业与不同产业经济增长的实证分析

为了协调我国人口就业与不同产业经济增长的关系,对1978～2005年期间我国的人口就业与不同产业经济增长之间进行了协整分析,得出我国人口就业与第二、第三产业经济增长之间存在长期的均衡关系;同时构建模型对我国不同产业的GDP与就业人数进行了回归分析,利用我国不同产业的GDP就业弹性,比较分析了我国不同产业对就业吸纳作用的差异;以及利用得出的结论提出保持适度的经济增长,进行产业结构调整,扩大劳务输出等政策建议是缓解和扩大我国人口就业的必然途径。     

A specification of marital fertility by parents’ age,age atmarriage and marital duration

The positive association between wife's age at marriage and fertility experienced at the older reproductive ages, cited in recent natural fertility literature, is explored using Mormon birth cohorts from 1840 to 1879. When this relationship is specified by husband's age at marriage and marriage duration, the results indicate that older-aged husbands depress marital fertility only at higher marriage durations. The general decomposition of age-specific fertility utilizing both mother's and father's age is also considered. The results show that mother's aging is the most important factor, while father's aging has a moderately negative effect under a natural fertility regime.     

美国联邦退休金制度:变迁、管理、启示

美国联邦退休金制度形成于20世纪60年代,目前已成为美国养老保险体系的一个重要支柱,其在资金筹集与运营、退休金计发以及管理责任分担方面的制度安排,启示着我国养老保险制度建设必将是一个渐进而复杂的过程。在这一过程中,养老保险的覆盖范围需不断扩大,养老保险基金运营需科学、规范,并要强化地方政府在养老保险管理中的主体责任。     

The old age security hypothesis and optimal population growth

The old age security approach is used to study the relationship between the rate of growth of the population and capital accumulation, within a Samuelson-Diamond overlapping generations framework. It is shown that a decentralized economy will fail, in general, to achieve the Pareto optimal path. However, a pay-as-you-go social security scheme in which the old get transfers which are proportional to the number of their children may restore optimality. On the other hand, child support systems or subsidies to capital can guarantee the optimal capital: labor ratio, but not the optimal population growth rate, while a lump sum social security system can guarantee the optimal population growth rate, but not the optimal capital: labor ratio. Finally, in a monetary economy any policy aimed at correcting the interest rate will restore full optimality.An earlier version of this paper was written during a visit to the University of California, San Diego. The paper benefited from the comments of two referees.     

Immigrant employment and earnings growth in Canada and the USA: evidence from longitudinal data

We study the short-term trajectories of employment, hours worked, and real wages of immigrants in Canada and the USA using nationally representative longitudinal datasets covering 1996–2008. Models with person fixed effects show that, on average, immigrant men in Canada do not experience any relative growth in these three outcomes compared to men born in Canada. Immigrant men in the USA, on the other hand, experience positive annual growth in all three domains relative to US-born men. This difference is largely on account of low-educated immigrant men, who experience faster or longer periods of relative growth in employment and wages in the USA than in Canada. We further compare longitudinal and cross-sectional trajectories and find that the latter over-estimate wage growth of earlier arrivals, presumably reflecting selective return migration.     

The interaction of migration,income, and employment in Sweden

A common approach in migration studies is to explain interregional migration by single-equation models. Such models are likely to suffer from simultaneous-equation bias when used in studies attempting to analyze migration over a long period of time. In this study, a simultaneous-equation approach is applied, which takes account of the interdependence between migration and income and employment changes. The four-equation model is estimated for 70 labor market areas in Sweden.     

Dual-earner migration. Earnings gains, employment and self-selection

This paper examines how spouses in dual-earner couples weigh each partner’s expected wage growth in the decision to migrate. Previous research suggests that husbands’ job prospects dominate the migration choice irrespective of their relative earnings potential. Based on British panel data, this paper employs an endogenous switching model and estimates wage differentials of migrating vs. staying for husbands and wives corrected for double selectivity of migration and employment. Dual-earner couples attach a positive weight to each partner’s expected wage gains when deciding to migrate. Moreover, migrant wives’ employment decreases temporarily, and there are significant selection effects in migration and employment amongst non-migrants.