Income Distribution Dynamics with Endogenous Fertility

Michael Kremer and Daniel L Chen

Journal of Economic Growth, 2002, vol. 7, issue 3, 227-58

Abstract: Developing countries with highly unequal income distributions, such as Brazil or South Africa, face an uphill battle in reducing inequality. Educated workers in these countries have a much lower birthrate than uneducated workers. Assuming children of educated workers are more likely to become educated, this fertility differential increases the proportion of unskilled workers, reducing their wages, and thus their opportunity cost of having children, creating a vicious cycle. A model incorporating this effect generates multiple steady-state levels of inequality, suggesting that in some circumstances, temporarily increasing access to educational opportunities could permanently reduce inequality. Empirical evidence suggests that the fertility differential between the educated and uneducated is greater in less equal countries, consistent with the model. Copyright 2002 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Date: 2002
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (106)

Downloads: (external link)
http://journals.kluweronline.com/issn/1381-4338/contents link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Income-distribution Dynamics with Endogenous Fertility (2000)
Journal Article: Income-Distribution Dynamics with Endogenous Fertility (1999)
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:kap:jecgro:v:7:y:2002:i:3:p:227-58

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... th/journal/10887/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Growth is currently edited by Oded Galor

More articles in Journal of Economic Growth from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().