nep-dem New Economics Papers
on Demographic Economics
Issue of 2019‒03‒18
four papers chosen by
Héctor Pifarré i Arolas
Universitat Pompeu Fabra

  1. Childlessness, Celibacy and Net Fertility in Pre-Industrial England: The Middle-class Evolutionary Advantage By Croix, David de la; Schneider, Eric B.; Weisdorf, Jacob
  2. The effect of child support on selection into marriage and fertility By Daniel I. Tannenbaum
  3. Population growth, the natural rate of interest, and inflation By Weiske, Sebastian
  4. How To Make A Pie: Reproducible Research for Empirical Economics & Econometrics By Valerie Orozco; Christophe Bontemps; Elise Maigne; Virginie Piguet; Annie Hofstetter; Anne Marie Lacroix; Fabrice Levert; Jean-Marc Rousselle

  1. By: Croix, David de la (IRES, UCLouvain and CEPR); Schneider, Eric B. (London School of Economics and CEPR); Weisdorf, Jacob (University of Southern Denmark, CEPR, and CAGE)
    Abstract: In explaining England’s early industrial development, previous research has highlighted that wealthy pre-industrial elites had more surviving offspring than their poorer counterparts. Thus, entrepreneurial traits spread and helped England grow rich. We contest this view, showing that lower-class reproduction rates were no different from the elites when taking singleness and childlessness into account. Elites married less and were more often childless. Many died without descendants. We find that the middle classes had the highest net reproduction and argue that this advantage was instrumental to England’s economic success because the middle class invested most strongly in human capital.
    Keywords: Fertility, Marriage, Childlessness, European Marriage Pattern, Industrial Revolution, Evolutionary Advantage, Social Class JEL Classification: J12, J13, N33
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:406&r=all
  2. By: Daniel I. Tannenbaum
    Abstract: Child support policies in the United States have expanded dramatically since the mid-1970s and now cover 1 in 5 children. This paper studies the consequences of child support for marriage and fertility decisions. I first introduce a model showing that child support enforces ex ante commitment from men to provide financial support in the event of a child, which (1) increases premarital sex among couples unlikely to marry, and (2) reduces the abortion rate, by lessening the cost of raising a child as a single mom. Using variation in the timing and geography of the rollout of U.S. child support laws relative to the timing of pregnancy, from 1977 to 1992, I find that marriages following an unplanned pregnancy are less likely to occur under strengthened child support laws, accounting for about a 7-8 percentage point reduction relative to a base of 38 percent. I find that the child support rollout reduced the abortion rate by 1-2 per 1000 women aged 15-44, off a base of 28, representing about 50 percent of the total decline in the abortion rate over this period.
    Keywords: child support, family, marriage, abortion
    JEL: J12 J13 K36
    Date: 2019–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:19-04&r=all
  3. By: Weiske, Sebastian
    Abstract: Population growth rates have fallen considerably in most developed countries. An important question for monetary policy is whether this has led to a fall in the natural rate of interest. In representative agent models, the response of the natural rate to a fertility shock crucially depends on the preference parameter determining how households weight generations of different size. Estimating a medium-scale model of the US-economy featuring fertility shocks, I find that declining population growth has lowered both the natural rate and inflation by about 0.4 percentage points in recent decades.
    Keywords: inflation,business cycles,monetary policy,natural rate of interest,demographic transition
    JEL: D64 D91 E31 E32 E52 J11
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:svrwwp:032019&r=all
  4. By: Valerie Orozco (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - Toulouse School of Economics); Christophe Bontemps (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - Toulouse School of Economics); Elise Maigne (US ODR - Observatoire des Programmes Communautaires de Développement Rural - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique); Virginie Piguet (CESAER - Centre d'Economie et de Sociologie Rurales Appliquées à l'Agriculture et aux Espaces Ruraux - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - AgroSup Dijon - Institut National Supérieur des Sciences Agronomiques, de l'Alimentation et de l'Environnement); Annie Hofstetter (LAMETA - Laboratoire Montpelliérain d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - UM1 - Université Montpellier 1 - UM3 - Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3 - Montpellier SupAgro - Centre international d'études supérieures en sciences agronomiques - INRA Montpellier - Institut national de la recherche agronomique [Montpellier] - UM - Université de Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Montpellier SupAgro - Institut national d’études supérieures agronomiques de Montpellier); Anne Marie Lacroix (GAEL - Laboratoire d'Economie Appliquée de Grenoble - UPMF - Université Pierre Mendès France - Grenoble 2 - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique); Fabrice Levert (SMART - Structures et Marché Agricoles, Ressources et Territoires - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - AGROCAMPUS OUEST); Jean-Marc Rousselle (LAMETA - Laboratoire Montpelliérain d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - UM1 - Université Montpellier 1 - UM3 - Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3 - Montpellier SupAgro - Centre international d'études supérieures en sciences agronomiques - INRA Montpellier - Institut national de la recherche agronomique [Montpellier] - UM - Université de Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Montpellier SupAgro - Institut national d’études supérieures agronomiques de Montpellier)
    Abstract: Empirical economics and econometrics (EEE) research now relies primarily on the application of code to datasets. Handling the workflow linking datasets, programs, results and finally manuscript(s) is essential if one wish to reproduce results, which is now increasingly required by journals and institutions. We underline here the importance of "reproducible research" in EEE and suggest three simple principles to follow. We illustrate these principles with good habits and tools, with particular focus on their implementation in most popular software and languages in applied economics.
    Keywords: workflow,replication,literate programming,software,reproducibility
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-02025843&r=all

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