Politics of Public Education and Pension Reform with Endogenous Fertility

We demonstrate the interaction between short-lived governments’ decisions on education and pension policies and parents’ decisions on fertility in an overlapping generations growth model. Our analysis shows that increased expected life expectancy lowers fertility, decreases the ratio of education expenditure to GDP, and increases the ratio of pension benefits to GDP as well as per capita GDP growth rate. We also consider a reform that reduces pension benefits designed by a long-lived planner and show that the reduction is optimal from a social welfare perspective when the planner gives a large weight to future generations.