 Urbanization, Long-run Growth, and the Demographic TransitionJODE - Journal of Demographic Economics, 2022, vol. 88, issue 1, 31-37 Abstract: Advanced economies undergo three transitions during their development: (1) transition from a rural to an urban economy, (2) transition from low-income growth to high-income growth, (3) transition from high fertility and mortality rates to low modern levels. The timings of these transitions are correlated in the historical development of most advanced economies. I consider a nonlinear model of endogenous long-run economic and demographic change, in which child quantity-quality substitution is driven by declining child mortality. Because the model captures the interactions between all three transitions, it is able to explain three additional empirical patterns: a declining urban-rural wage gap, a declining rural-urban family size ratio, and most surprisingly, that early urbanization slows development. This third prediction distinguishes the model from other theories of long-run growth, and I document evidence for it in cross-country data. Keywords: Demographic transition; Fertility; Growth; Mortality; Structural changes; Urbanization (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ctl:louvde:v:88:y:2022:i:1:p:31-37 Access Statistics for this article More articles in JODE - Journal of Demographic Economics from Cambridge University Press Place Montesquieu 3, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). Contact information at EDIRC. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.