Health capital provision and human capital accumulation

This article analyses the effect of public policy intervention in the production of health capital on fertility, private investment in children’s health and education, and human capital accumulation. I have used a growth model with endogenous fertility, in which the usual parental trade-off between the quantity and quality of their children is augmented with an additional factor that affects children’s human capital, which is health. I analyse the overall society-wide effect of public policy intervention and derive a condition that determines precisely whether public provision of free health services increases or decreases the average level of human capital in the society.

Childcare Allowances and Public Pensions: Welfare and Demographic Effects in an Aging Japan

In this study, reforms on childcare allowances and public pensions are examined in an extended lifecycle simulation model with endogenous fertility. A slight increase in family policies such as childcare allowances leads to increases in the total population but the magnitude of change is not large. As childcare allowances increase, however, the total population is cumulatively and progressively augmented, resulting in substantial growth in the total population and national income in the long run. Furthermore, from a long-term perspective, increases in childcare subsidies or decreases in public pension benefits are potentially Pareto-improving.

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE THEORY OF FERTILITY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

The aim of this research is to build on a theory for explaining economic development in a (neoclassical) growth model with endogenous fertility. The economy is inhabited by overlapping generations of rational and identical individuals and identical competitive firms producing with a constant-returns-to-scale technology and no externalities. From a theoretical perspective, the distinguishing feature of this work is that endogenous fertility per se explains the existence of low- and high-development regimes. It provides different reasons (history driven or expectations driven) why some countries enter development trajectories with high GDP and low fertility and others experience underperformances with low GDP and high fertility. The model is also capable to reproduce fertility fluctuations and explain the baby busts and baby booms observed in the last century in some developed countries.

The Effects of a Revenue-Neutral Child Subsidy Tax Mechanism on Growth and GHG Emissions

Growing population, greenhouse gas emissions, and the pressure to improve economic growth are conflicting and controversial issues at the core of political economy. In this paper, using a theoretical model, we show that by shifting relative costs of child-rearing and costs for education, we can achieve a slowdown in population growth and greenhouse emissions, and an enhancement of economic growth. These goals are based on two fundamental considerations—the quantity–quality tradeoff with respect to the choice of the number, and the educational level of children. An analysis is presented using a standard overlapping generation (OLG) framework that is extended with human capital, endogenous fertility, and changing life expectancy. The environmental impact of economic activities is modeled using a modified IPAT framework. Our results show that it is possible to reduce the level of carbon emissions of the whole economy and to generate a Pareto improvement. Subsequently, an economic strategy is presented that is costless, has various advantages, and particularly useful for countries experiencing high fertility rate that are not sustainable.

Efficiency and endogenous fertility

This paper explores the properties of the notions of A ‐efficiency and P ‐efficiency, which were proposed by Golosov et al.. (2007), to evaluate allocations in a general overlapping generations setting in which fertility choices are endogenously selected from a continuum and any two agents of the same generation are identical. First, we show that the properties of A ‐efficient allocations vary depending on the criterion used to identify potential agents. If one identifies potential agents by their position in their siblings' birth order, as Golosov, Jones, and Tertilt do, then A ‐efficiency requires that a positive measure of agents use most of their endowment to maximize the utility of the dynasty head, which, in environments with finite‐horizon altruism, implies that some agents—the youngest in every family—obtain an arbitrary low income to finance their own consumption and fertility plans. If potential agents are identified by the dates in which they may be born, then A ‐efficiency reduces to dynastic maximization, which, in environments with finite‐horizon altruism, drives the economy to a collapse in finite time. To deal with situations like those arising in economies with finite‐horizon altruism, in which A ‐efficiency may be in conflict with individual rights, we propose to evaluate the efficiency of a given allocation with a particular class of specifications of P ‐efficiency for which the utility attributed to the unborn depends on the utility obtained by their living siblings. Under certain concavity assumptions on value functions, we also characterize every symmetric, P ‐efficient allocation as a Millian efficient allocation, that is, as a symmetric allocation that is not A ‐dominated—with the birth‐order criterion—by any other symmetric allocation.

THE GREAT TRANSITION: IMPLICATIONS FROM ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY FOR THE QUALITY–QUANTITY TRADE-OFF IN CHILDREN-REARING

We develop an overlapping-generations model with human capital accumulation and endogenous fertility containing a pollution externality. We study the effects of an environmental policy on individuals’ quality–quantity trade-off on children. In a Malthusian poverty trap, we show that a more stringent policy induces a reduction of fertility. In a state of perpetual development, we find a similar result and show that higher environmental quality, growth and welfare are compatible goals. Moreover, we show that the policy can be used as an instrument for initiating a country’s great transition from a state of poverty to a state of development.