Deep-Rooted Determinants of the Fertility Transition Across Countries

Basso, Alberto; Cuberes, David

doi:10.1017/s1365100515001042

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 51 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Specifically, assume that income per capita in country i is 1 Individualism has also been linked to the timing of the fertility transition (Basso and Cuberes, 2016). 2 The analysis focuses on observational equivalence in pairwise regressions, but it is easy to show using the same type of arguments that the similar necessary and sufficient conditions are required for observational equivalence to hold in country-level regressions.…”

Section: Observational Equivalence In Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the other hand, a more recent strand of the literature has emphasized a potential barrier effect of culture on development, i.e. how relative levels of a cultural trait affect economic development (Basso and Cuberes, 2016;Guiso et al, 2009;Spolaore and Wacziarg, 2009). In particular, cultural differences relative to the technological frontier, like not sharing its religion or language, might act as cultural barriers to technological diffusion and thus lower economic development Wacziarg, 2012, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Culture, diffusion, and economic development: The problem of observational equivalence

Harutyunyan

Özak

2017

Economics Letters

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This research explores the direct and barrier effects of culture on economic development. It shows both theoretically and empirically that whenever the technological frontier is at the top or bottom of the world distribution of a cultural value, there exists an observational equivalence between absolute cultural distances and cultural distances relative to the frontier, preventing the identification of its direct and barrier effects. Since the technological frontier usually has the "right" cultural values for development, it tends to be in the extremes of the distribution of cultural traits, generating observational equivalence and confounding the analysis. These results highlight the difficulty of disentangling the direct and barrier effects of culture. The empirical analysis finds suggestive evidence for direct effects of individualism and conformity with hierarchy, and barrier effects of hedonism.

show abstract

Section: Observational Equivalence In Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Culture, diffusion, and economic development: The problem of observational equivalence

Harutyunyan

Özak

2017

Economics Letters

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The fall in mortality and especially fertility rates during a demographic transition allows parents to invest more heavily in the "quality" of children, and this translates, at the macro level, into a larger stock of human capital and economic growth in the long run. For example, Figure 1, from Basso and Cuberes (2017), illustrates this by showing a negative correlation between per worker output in 2010 and the year at which a country experienced the onset of the fertility transition.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Equilibrium and -efficient fertility with increasing returns to population and endogenous mortality

Tamura

Cuberes

2020

J. Dem. Econ.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A general equilibrium model that characterizes the gap between optimal and equilibrium fertility and investment in human capital is developed. The aggregate production function exhibits increasing returns to population arising from specialization, but households face a quantity–quality trade-off when choosing their fertility and how much education these children receive. We show that equilibrium fertility is too low and investment per child is too high, in contrast to a current planner who internalizes the externality of current fertility on the next generation's productivity. We next introduce mortality of young adults in the model and assume that households have a precautionary demand for children. Human capital investment lowers next generation mortality. This model endogenously generates a demographic transition but, since households do not internalize the negative effects of human capital on mortality, the equilibrium demographic transition takes place many years later than the efficient solution. We show that ${\rm {\cal A}}$-efficient fertility and human capital investment pair can switch; in high-mortality regimes, ${\rm {\cal A}}$-efficient fertility is lower than equilibrium fertility, and ${\rm {\cal A}}$-efficient human capital investment is higher than equilibrium investment. In the zero mortality regime, however, ${\rm {\cal A}}$-efficient fertility exceeds equilibrium fertility, and ${\rm {\cal A}}$-efficient human capital investment is lower than the equilibrium choice.

show abstract

“…After the seminal work of Becker and Lewis (1973) and Becker and Tomes (1976), several studies in this field have investigated the substitution mechanism inherent in the QQ tradeoff [Becker et al (2010), Yakita (2010), Fernihough (2017]. Others analyzed the role of education [McCrary and Royer (2011), Duflo et al (2015), Hansen et al (2017)], child policies Gori (2012, 2014)], economic insecurity [Adsera (2011), Modena et al (2014)], technology adoption [Basso and Cuberes (2017)], and labor supply [Angrist and Evans (1998)]. We add to this literature by studying the role of social capital.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Capital, Human Capital, and Fertility

2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We develop an overlapping generations model to study how the interplay between social and human capital affects fertility. In a framework where families face a trade-off between the quantity and quality of children, we incorporate the assumption that social capital plays a key role in the accumulation of human capital. We show how the erosion of social capital can trigger a chain of reactions leading households to base their childbearing decisions on quantity, instead of quality, resulting in higher fertility.

show abstract

Deep-Rooted Determinants of the Fertility Transition Across Countries

Cited by 8 publications

References 51 publications

Culture, diffusion, and economic development: The problem of observational equivalence

Culture, diffusion, and economic development: The problem of observational equivalence

Equilibrium and -efficient fertility with increasing returns to population and endogenous mortality

Social Capital, Human Capital, and Fertility

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About