Fertility, Mortality and Environmental Policy

Ulla Lehmijoki () and Tapio Palokangas
Additional contact information
Ulla Lehmijoki: University of Helsinki

No 10465, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This article examines pollution and environmental mortality in an economy where fertility is endogenous and output is produced from labor and capital by two sectors, dirty and clean. An emission tax curbs dirty production, which decreases pollution-induced mortality but also shifts resources to the clean sector. If the dirty sector is more capital intensive, then this shift increases labor demand and wages. This, in turn, raises the opportunity cost of rearing a child, thereby decreasing fertility and the population size. Correspondingly, if the clean sector is more capital intensive, then the emission tax decreases the wage and increases fertility. Although the proportion of the dirty sector in production falls, the expansion of population boosts total pollution, aggravating mortality.

Keywords: environmental mortality; pollution tax; population growth; two-sector models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 O41 Q56 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2016-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env, nep-hea and nep-res
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp10465.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10465

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().