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on Demographic Economics |
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Issue of 2018‒03‒19
seven papers chosen by Héctor Pifarré i Arolas Max-Planck-Institut für demografische Forschung |
| By: | Michael Geruso; Heather Royer |
| Abstract: | We examine the impact of educational attainment on fertility and mating market outcomes. Using a regression discontinuity design, we exploit an extension of the compulsory schooling age from 15 to 16 in 1972 in the UK. The change was binding for a quarter of the population. Simple plots of the raw data show substantially lower teen fertility rates across the threshold of the reform, but no impacts on abortions and no impact on completed fertility by age 45. In the mating market, the reform induced both men and women to marry more educated mates, consistent with positive assortative mating. We show that timing of the teen fertility reduction coincided with the timing of the extra induced schooling and that the probability of marrying a peer in the same academic cohort rose. These results suggest that school attendance may have important direct effects, in addition to and separate from the human capital effects of education. |
| JEL: | J12 J13 |
| Date: | 2018–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24332&r=dem |
| By: | Brown, Dan; De Cao, Elisabetta |
| Abstract: | We study the effect of unemployment on child maltreatment in the United States for the period 2004-12, at the county level. We use a new administrative dataset containing every report of child abuse and neglect made to the Child Protective Services, and identify the effect using a Bartik instrument. A one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate causes a 20 percent increase in neglect. We provide evidence that parents’ lack of social and private safety nets is an important mechanism behind the effect. Our results capture an effect on the actual incidence of neglect and not reporting behaviour. |
| Date: | 2018–03–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ese:iserwp:2018-04&r=dem |
| By: | Mazhar Yasin MUGHAL; Rashid JAVED |
| Abstract: | Son preference is common in many Asian countries. Though a growing body of literature examines the drivers and socioeconomic impacts of phenomenon in case of China and India, work on other Asian countries is scarce. This study uses nationally representative survey of over 13 thousand households from Pakistan (PDHS 2012-13) to analyze the effects of observed preference for sons on women‘s participation in intra-household decision-making. Four key intra-household decisions are considered: decisions regarding healthcare, family visits, large household purchases and spending husband's income. These correspond to four categories of household decisions, namely healthcare, social, consumption and financial. Probit and Ordered Probit are employed as the main estimation techniques and other determinants of household decision-making are controlled for. Besides, a number of matching routines are employed to account for the possibility of potential selection bias. We find that women with at least one son have more say in household decisions. Bearing at least one son is associated with 5%, 7% and 5% higher say in decisions involving healthcare, social and consumption matters respectively. Women's role in financial affairs, however, does not differ significantly from women with no sons. Female participation in decisionmaking grows significantly with the number of sons but only up to the third parity. These results are particularly visible among younger, wealthier and educated women, and those who got married earlier. The findings suggest a limited improvement in women's bargaining power at home resulting from the birth of one or more sons. This in part explains higher desire for sons expressed by women compared to men in household surveys. |
| Keywords: | Son preference, Gender bias, Sex selection, Female decision-making, intrahousehold bargaining, Pakistan |
| JEL: | C13 C70 D13 J13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tac:wpaper:2017-2018_5&r=dem |
| By: | Cilliers, Jeanne (Department of Economic History, Lund University); Mariotti, Martine (Research School of Economics, Australian National University) |
| Abstract: | Using South African Families (SAF), a new database of settler genealogies, we provide the first comprehensive analysis of women’s fertility in settler South Africa between 1700 and 1900. Differences in parity rates across geographic regions suggest couples knew how to limit fertility prior to the global onset of the first fertility transition. We date the start of South Africa’s fertility transition to cohorts born in the 1850s, having children from the 1870s. This timing is similar to other settler communities and earlier than many European countries despite somewhat different economic and social circumstances. |
| Keywords: | South Africa; Fertility; Genealogies; Settler demography |
| JEL: | J13 N01 N37 |
| Date: | 2018–03–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:luekhi:0173&r=dem |
| By: | Hippolyte D'Albis (PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, PSE - Paris School of Economics); Florian Bonnet (UP1 UFR02 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - UFR d'Économie - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, PSE - Paris School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | Becker, Philipson and Soares (2005) maintain that including life expectancy gains in a welfare indicator result in a reduction of inequality between 1960 and 2000 twice as great as when measured by per capita income. We discuss their methodology and show it determines the convergence result. We use an alternative methodology, based on Fleurbaey and Gaulier (2009), which monetizes differences in life expectancy between countries at each date rather than life expectancy gains. We show that including life expectancy has no effect on the evolution of world inequality. |
| Keywords: | World inequality,Well-being indicators,Life expectancy |
| Date: | 2018–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:psewpa:halshs-01707748&r=dem |
| By: | Davoine, Thomas (Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna) |
| Abstract: | Population aging challenges the financing of social security systems in developed economies, as the fraction of the population in working age declines. The resulting pressure on capital-labor ratios translates into a pressure on factor prices and production. While European countries all face this challenge, the speed at which their population ages differs, and thus the pressure on capital-labor ratios. If capital markets are integrated, differences in population aging may lead to cross-country spillovers, as investors freely seek the best returns on capital. Using a multi-country overlapping-generations model covering 14 European Union countries, I quantify spillovers and find that capital market integration leads to redistribution across countries over the long run. For instance, GDP per capita would on average be 2.9 %-points lower in Germany in each of the next 50 years if capital markets were perfectly integrated and public debts kept constants with increases in labor income taxes, compared to a closed economy case; by contrast, GDP per capita would on average be 2.1 %-points higher in France, whose population ages slower than in Germany. I also show that pension reforms can change the cross-country redistribution patterns, some countries losing from capital market integration without the reform but winning with it. |
| Keywords: | population aging, pension reforms, capital markets, cross-country spillovers, overlapping-generations modelling |
| JEL: | C68 E60 F41 J11 |
| Date: | 2018–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ihs:ihsesp:337&r=dem |
| By: | Victor Court (CERES-ERTI - Centre d'Enseignement et de Recherche sur l'Environnement et la Societé / Environmental Research and Teaching Institute - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris); Emmanuel Bovari (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | This article provides a knowledge-based and energy-centered unified growth model of the economic transition from limited to sustained growth. In an overlapping generation framework, we introduce final energy as a production factor of a composite final good sector, along with human capital, a learning-by-doing technology, and a Schumpeterian technology. Final energy results from a CES aggregation of energy inputs that come from renewable (biomass, wind, water) and exhaustible (coal, oil, gas) primary resources. The production of those inputs also requires human capital along with specific learning-by-doing and Schumpeterian technologies. Furthermore, with an endogenous sequence of General Purpose Technologies (GPTs), we explicitly feature pure technological externalities that foster the efficiency of both learning-by-doing and R&D-based technological progress. This setting allows us to distinguish two economic regimes: (i) a pre-modern organic regime dominated by limited growth in per capita output, high fertility, low levels of human capital, technological progress generated by learning-by-doing, and rare GPT arrivals; and (ii) a modern fossil regime characterized by sustained growth of per capita output, low fertility, high levels of human capital, technological progress generated by profit-motivated R&D, and increasingly frequent GPT arrivals. Most importantly, these economic, technological and demographic regimes' changes are associated with an energy transition. This transition results from the endogenous shortage of renewable resources availability and the arrival of new GPTs, which redirect technological progress towards the exploitation of previously unprofitable exhaustible energy carriers. Calibrations of the model are currently in progress and will allow a simulation of the historical experience of England for the period 1560-2010. In a second step, we plan to reiterate these simulations to compare the different trajectories of Western Europe and Eastern Asia. |
| Keywords: | Unified Growth Theory,Useful Knowledge,Energy Transition,Demography |
| Date: | 2018–01–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:cesptp:hal-01698755&r=dem |