IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ctl/louvde/v82y2016i1p111-138.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Stochastic Dominance and Demographic Policy Evaluation: A Critique

Author

Listed:
  • Juan Carlos CORDOBA

    (Iowa State University)

  • Xiying LIU

    (Economics and Management School of Wuhan University)

Abstract

Stochastic dominance (SD) is commonly used to rank income distributions and assess social policies. The literature argues that SD is a robust criterion for policy evaluation because it requires minimal knowledge of the social welfare function. We argue that, on the contrary, SD is not a robust criterion. We do this by carefully introducing microfoundations into a model by Chu and Koo (1990) who use SD to provide support to family-planning programs aiming at reducing the fertility of the poor. We show that fertility restrictions are generally detrimental for both individual and social welfare in spite of the fact that SD holds. Our findings are an application of the Lucas’ Critique.

Suggested Citation

  • Juan Carlos CORDOBA & Xiying LIU, 2016. "Stochastic Dominance and Demographic Policy Evaluation: A Critique," JODE - Journal of Demographic Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 82(1), pages 111-138, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:ctl:louvde:v:82:y:2016:i:1:p:111-138
    DOI: 10.1017/dem.2016.1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/dem.2016.1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1017/dem.2016.1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cordoba, Juan Carlos & Liu, Xiying, 2018. "Efficiency with Endogenous Population and Fixed Resources," ISU General Staff Papers 201811010700001062, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Fertility; Children; Welfare; Demographic policies; One child policy; Income distribution; Stochastic dominance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ctl:louvde:v:82:y:2016:i:1:p:111-138. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sebastien SCHILLINGS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iruclbe.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.