Demographic Transition and Economic Welfare: The Role of Humanitarian Aid

Kyriakos Neanidis and Stephen Miller

No 1201, Working Papers from University of Nevada, Las Vegas , Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper considers the effects of humanitarian aid on economic welfare through a demographic transition channel. We develop a two-period overlapping generations model where reproductive agents face a non-zero probability of death in childhood. As adults, agents allocate their time to work, leisure, and child rearing activities. Health status in adulthood exhibits “state dependence,” as it depends on health in childhood. In this framework, we examine the effects of changes in in-kind and monetary humanitarian aid on economic welfare. We conclude that if parents strongly value children, giving monetary aid produces more children and yields higher welfare. This positive welfare effect dominates an indirect negative welfare effect due to a lower growth rate. But, if parents value the quality of their children (health status), they achieve greater utility by in-kind aid, which also lowers fertility and augments economic growth.

Keywords: aid; fertility; health; growth; welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 F35 F43 I12 O41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2012-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem and nep-dge
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://web.unlv.edu/projects/RePEc/pdf/1201.pdf First version, 2012 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to web.unlv.edu:80 (No such host is known. )

Related works:
Working Paper: Demographic Transition and Economic Welfare: The Role of Humanitarian Aid (2012)
Working Paper: Demographic Transition and Economic Welfare: The Role of Humanitarian Aid (2012)
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:nlv:wpaper:1201

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Nevada, Las Vegas , Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bill Robinson ().