Low fertility and long run growth in an economy with a large public sector

Jovan Zamac (), Daniel Hallberg and Thomas Lindh

No 2009:5, CAFO Working Papers from Linnaeus University, Centre for Labour Market Policy Research (CAFO), School of Business and Economics

Abstract: Recently it has been suggested that low fertility countries may be caught in a trap that is hard to get out of. One important mechanism in such a trap would be social interaction and its effect on the ideal family size. Such social interaction mechanisms are hard to capture in formal models, therefore we use an agent based simulation model to investigate the issue. In our experimental setup a stable growth and population path is calibrated to Swedish data and using the Swedish social policy setup. The model is provoked into a fertility trap by increasing relative child costs linked to positive growth. Even rather large increases in child benefits are then insufficient to get out of the trap. However, the small number of children temporarily enables the economy to grow faster for several decades. Removing the adaptation of social norms turns out to disarm the trap.

Keywords: Low fertility trap; Social norms relative income; Economic growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2008-12-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-fdg and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.vxu.se/ehv/filer/forskning/cafo/wps/Nek_wp5_09.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
Journal Article: Low Fertility and Long-Run Growth in an Economy with a Large Public Sector (2010)
Working Paper: Low fertility and long run growth in an economy with a large public sector (2008)
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:hhs:vxcafo:2009_005

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CAFO Working Papers from Linnaeus University, Centre for Labour Market Policy Research (CAFO), School of Business and Economics Centre for Labour Market Policy Research (CAFO), School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University, SE 351 95 Växjö, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Andreas Mångs ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).