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

Luciano Fanti and Luca Gori ()

Discussion Papers from Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

Abstract: In this paper we link endogenous fertility, endogenous longevity, economic growth and public policies - represented by public health investments and child policies - in a basic overlapping generations model. We found that there even exist four equilibria, and thus low and high development regimes, which may be, however, determined by government policies, and concluded that when fertility is endogenous, increasing public health is always beneficial allowing economies to escape from poverty and, hence, to prosper. The same conclusion holds for the child tax policy. In particular, the latter result may be in accord with, for instance, the tremendous development experienced by China where a restrictive one child per family policy forced by the government planned and restricted the size of Chinese families, probably allowing some geographic areas within China to escape from poverty.

Keywords: Child policy; Endogenous fertility; Health; Life expectancy; OLG model. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I1 J13 O4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-10-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-fdg, nep-hap, nep-hea and nep-tra
Note: ISSN 2039-1854
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pie:dsedps:2009/91

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