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42
Unified Growth Theory
, 2011
"... This paper develops the theoretical foundations and the testable implications of the various mechanisms that have been proposed as possible triggers for the demographic transition. Moreover, it examines the empirical validity of each of the theories and their signi…cance for the understanding of the ..."
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Cited by 93 (14 self)
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This paper develops the theoretical foundations and the testable implications of the various mechanisms that have been proposed as possible triggers for the demographic transition. Moreover, it examines the empirical validity of each of the theories and their signi…cance for the understanding of the transition from stagnation to growth. The analysis suggests that the rise in the demand for human capital in the process of development was the main trigger for the decline in fertility and the transition to modern growth
The quantity-quality tradeoff of children in a developing country: Identification using Chinese twins
- Demography
, 2008
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Fertility Theories: Can They Explain the Negative Fertility-Income Relationship?” National Bureau of Economic Research. Forthcoming
, 2008
"... In this chapter we revisit the relationship between income and fertility. There is overwhelming empirical evidence that fertility is negatively related to income in most countries at most times. Several theories have been pro-posed in the literature to explain this somewhat puzzling fact. The most c ..."
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Cited by 27 (2 self)
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In this chapter we revisit the relationship between income and fertility. There is overwhelming empirical evidence that fertility is negatively related to income in most countries at most times. Several theories have been pro-posed in the literature to explain this somewhat puzzling fact. The most common one is based on the opportunity cost of time being higher for in-dividuals with higher earnings. Alternatively, people might differ in their desire to procreate and accordingly some people invest more in children and less in market-specific human capital and thus have lower earnings. We re-visit these and other possible explanations. We find that these theories are not as robust as is commonly believed. That is, several special assumptions are needed to generate the negative relationship. Not all assumptions are equally plausible. Such findings will be useful to distinguish alternative the-ories. We conclude that further research along these lines is needed. ∗We thank Todd Schoellman, John Knowles, and the participants at the NBER pre-conference
Complements versus substitutes and trends in fertility choice in dynastic models. International Economic Review 51 : 671–699
, 2010
"... The Barro-Becker dynastic model is a simple intuitive model of fertility choice. In its original formulation, however, it has not been very successful at reproducing the changes in fertility choice in response to decreased mortality and increased income growth that demographers have emphasized in ex ..."
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Cited by 25 (0 self)
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The Barro-Becker dynastic model is a simple intuitive model of fertility choice. In its original formulation, however, it has not been very successful at reproducing the changes in fertility choice in response to decreased mortality and increased income growth that demographers have emphasized in explaining the demographic transition. In this paper we show that this is due to an implicit assumption that number and utility of children are complements, which is a byproduct of the high intertemporal elasticity of substitution (IES) typically assumed in the fertility literature. We show that, not only is this assumption not necessary, but both the qualitative and quantitative properties of the model in terms of fertility choice change dramatically when substitutability and high curvature are assumed. We find that with an IES less than one, model predictions of changes in fertility amount to about two-thirds of those observed in U.S. data since 1800. There are two major sources to these predicted changes: the increase in the growth rate of productivity which accounts for about 90 percent of the predicted fall in fertility before 1880; and changes in mortality which account for 90 percent of the predicted change from 1880 to 1950.
Is crime contagious
- Princeton Industrial Relations Section Working Paper 510, at http://www.wws.princeton.edu/~kling/mto/recent.html
, 2006
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The Long Term Consequences of Famine on Survivors: Evidence from a Unique Natural Experiment using China’s Great Famine.” NBER Working paper No. 14917 Meng
- Famine and Overweight in China.” IFPRI Discussion Paper Oreopoulos
, 2009
"... This paper estimates the long run impact of famine on survivors in the context of Chinas Great Famine. To address problems of measurement error of famine exposure and potential endogeneity of famine intensity, we exploit a novel source of variation in regional intensity of famine derived from the un ..."
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Cited by 13 (0 self)
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This paper estimates the long run impact of famine on survivors in the context of Chinas Great Famine. To address problems of measurement error of famine exposure and potential endogeneity of famine intensity, we exploit a novel source of variation in regional intensity of famine derived from the unique institutional determinants of the Great Famine. To address attenuation bias caused by selection for survival, we estimate the impact on the upper quantiles of the distribution of outcomes. Our results indicate that in-utero and early childhood exposure to famine had large negative e¤ects on adult height, weight, weight-for-height, educational attainment and labor supply. (O1 Development, I0 Health, J1 Demography) 1
The Effect of Fertility Reduction on Economic Growth
, 2012
"... We assess quantitatively the effect of exogenous reductions in fertility on output per capita. Our simulation model allows for effects that run through schooling, the size and age structure of the population, capital accumulation, parental time input into child-rearing, and crowding of fixed natural ..."
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Cited by 6 (0 self)
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We assess quantitatively the effect of exogenous reductions in fertility on output per capita. Our simulation model allows for effects that run through schooling, the size and age structure of the population, capital accumulation, parental time input into child-rearing, and crowding of fixed natural resources. The model is parameterized using a combination of microeconomic estimates, data on demographics and natural resource income in developing countries, and standard components of quantitative macroeconomic theory. We apply the model to examine the effect of a change in fertility from the UN medium-variant to the UN low-variant projection, using Nigerian vital rates as a baseline. For a base case set of parameters, we find that such a change would raise output per capita by 5.6 percent at a horizon of 20 years, and by 11.9 percent at a horizon of 50 years.
The effect of job displacement on couples’ fertility decisions
- University Library of Munich
, 2012
"... Government ..."
The Optimal Tax Treatment of Families with Children.” SIEPR Discussion Paper
, 2007
"... economic and public policy issues. The SIEPR Discussion Paper Series reports on research and policy ..."
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Cited by 2 (0 self)
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economic and public policy issues. The SIEPR Discussion Paper Series reports on research and policy
The Impact of Sibling Sex Composition on Women’s educational Achievements: A Unique Natural Experiment by Twins Gender Shocks,” mimeo, SUNY-Albany
, 2008
"... ful suggestions. We thank the Ministries of Education and Interior Affairs for providing data; and the National Science Council of Taiwan for financial support. 1 In a pro-male biased society, brothers may reduce the parental investment re-ceived by female siblings, if parents face time or financial ..."
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Cited by 2 (2 self)
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ful suggestions. We thank the Ministries of Education and Interior Affairs for providing data; and the National Science Council of Taiwan for financial support. 1 In a pro-male biased society, brothers may reduce the parental investment re-ceived by female siblings, if parents face time or financial constraints. But brothers may also cause positive externalities. Using more than 12,000 firstborn twins from a highly sex-imbalanced economy, Taiwan, we test if women have fewer opportunities to attend college if they have a brother rather than a sister. To minimize the prob-lem of sex selection, we exploit the fact that twin sex is random given the sex of the other twin, once we limit the data to time periods in which abortion was illegal and technology was unavailable to abort one of the two twins. We show that the birth of a male sibling, relative to a female, has almost no impact on women’s or men’s college enrollments on the average. If there is any effect, it is small and imprecise. Our results point to the importance of accounting for positive externalities (e.g.,
