Is Menopause Optimal?

Christian Zimmermann

No 2004-31, Working papers from University of Connecticut, Department of Economics

Abstract: Various theories have been put forward to explain the fact that humans experience menopause while virtually no animals do. This paper aims to investigate one such theory: children provide a savings technology into old age, but as human babies are usually large and have long gestation periods, a substantial risk of death exists for the mother as she bears children. It seems therefore appropriate to impose a stopping rule for fertility. Given an objective (support for old age) and demographics (mortality of mother and children), an optimal age for menopause can be calculated. Using demographic data from populations that have seen little influence from modern medicine, this optimal age is compared to empirical evidence.

Keywords: menopause; demography; fertility; stopping rule; recursive problems. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 D91 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 14 pages
Date: 2004-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://media.economics.uconn.edu/working/2004-31.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Is Menopause Optimal? (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:uct:uconnp:2004-31

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working papers from University of Connecticut, Department of Economics University of Connecticut 365 Fairfield Way, Unit 1063 Storrs, CT 06269-1063. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark McConnel ().