Complex demoeconomic dynamics

We show how various kinds of qualitative long run demoeconomic behavior depend on household preferences, productivity and the cost of childrearing. In particular, a dominant trend in growth can be interspersed with periods of fluctuation as slowly moving changes in productivity, preference and child care costs push nonlinearities past crucial bifurcation points. Moreover, nonperiodic, essentially unpredictable demoeconomic behavior is robust, thus suggesting a possible explanation for persistent and substantial errors in population forecasts./p]A partial draft of the present paper was first presented at the annual meetings of the Population Association of America, San Francisco, April 3, 1986. The computer experiments were performed by Changseob Kim and Weihong Huang.