Endogenous fertility with a sibship size effect

Elise Brezis () and Rodolphe Dos Santos Ferreira

Working Papers of BETA from Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg

Abstract: Since the seminal work of Becker, the dynamics of endogenous fertility has been based on the trade-off faced by parents between the quantity and the quality of their children. However, in developing countries, when child labor is an indispensable source of household income, parents actually incur a negative cost for having an extra child, so that the trade-off disappears. The purpose of this paper is to restore the Beckerian quantity-quality trade-off in the case intergenerational transfers are upstream, so as to keep fertility endogenous. We do that by adding a negative “sibship size effect” on human capital formation to the standard Becker model. With a simple specification, we obtain multiplicity of steady states or, more fundamentally, the possibility of a jump from a state with high fertility and low income to a state with low fertility and high income, triggered by a continuous increase in the productivity of human capital formation.

Keywords: Endogenous fertility; Intergenerational transfers; Human capital formation; Demographic transition. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-gro, nep-hrm and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: ENDOGENOUS FERTILITY WITH A SIBSHIP SIZE EFFECT (2016)
Working Paper: Endogenous fertility with a sibship size effect (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2014-03

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