Population Size: Individual Choice and Social Optima

Marc Nerlove, Assaf Razin and Efraim Sadka

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1985, vol. 100, issue 2, 321-334

Abstract: Optimal population size when fertility is endogenous is considered in relation to two social welfare criteria, a Benthamite and a Millian, and in relation to purely individualistic maximization of utility in the current generation. We show that a tax-subsidy scheme involving child allowances and subsidies to future generation consumption can be found to support a social optimum through individual choice. A general proof that the optimal population size according to the Benthamite criterion is always larger than that given by the Millian criterion is presented, but we show that no general conclusions about the size of the population under laissez-faire are possible.

Date: 1985
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (33)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/1885384 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:qjecon:v:100:y:1985:i:2:p:321-334.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics is currently edited by Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan Nunn, Andrei Shleifer and Stefanie Stantcheva

More articles in The Quarterly Journal of Economics from President and Fellows of Harvard College
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().