Endogenous fertility, endogenous lifetime and economic growth: the role of child policies

Fanti, Luciano and Gori, Luca (2010): Endogenous fertility, endogenous lifetime and economic growth: the role of child policies.

Abstract

We examine the effects of child policies on both the transitional dynamics and long-run demo-economic outcomes in the conventional overlapping generations model of neoclassical growth extended with endogenous longevity and endogenous fertility. The government invests in public health (Chakraborty, 2004) and the individual survival probability at the end of youth depends on health expenditure through an S-shaped longevity function. This may give rise to four steady states and, hence, development traps are possible. However, poverty or prosperity may not depend on initial conditions, while being the result of a child policy design. In particular, a child tax can be used to effectively allow those economies that were entrapped into poverty to prosper irrespective of where they start from.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Child policy; Endogenous fertility; Health; Life expectancy; OLG model
• Subjects: J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics > J13 - Fertility ; Family Planning ; Child Care ; Children ; Youth; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O4 - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity > O40 - General; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health > I10 - General

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