The optimal design of assisted reproductive technologies policies

Marie-Louise Leroux, Pierre Pestieau and Gregory Ponthiere

No 2022022, LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Abstract: This paper studies the optimal design of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) policies in an economy where individuals differ in their reproductive capacity (or fecundity) and in their wage. We find that the optimal ART policy varies with the postulated social welfare criterion. Utilitarianism redistributes only between individuals with unequal fecundity and wages but not between parents and childless individuals. To the opposite, ex post egalitarianism (which gives absolute priority to the worst-off in realized terms) redistributes from individuals with children toward those without children, and from individuals with high fecundity toward those with low fecundity, so as to compensate for both the monetary cost of ART and for the disutility from involuntary childlessness resulting from unsuccessful ART investments. Under asymmetric information and in order to solve for the incentive problem, utilitarianism recommends also to either tax or subsidize ART investments of low-fecundity-lowproductivity individuals depending on the degree of complementarity between fecundity and ART in the fertility technology. On the opposite, ex post egalitarianism always recommends marginal taxation.

Keywords: Fertility; assisted reproductive technologies; non-linear taxation; utilitarianism; ex-post egalitarianism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H31 H51 I14 I18 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29
Date: 2022-06-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/en/object/bore ... tastream/PDF_01/view (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The optimal design of assisted reproductive technologies policies (2024)
Working Paper: The Optimal Design of Assisted Reproductive Technologies Policies (2022)
Working Paper: The optimal design of assisted reproductive technologies policies (2022)
Working Paper: The optimal design of assisted reproductive technologies policies (2022)
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:cor:louvco:2022022

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) Voie du Roman Pays 34, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alain GILLIS (alain.gillis@uclouvain.be).