IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/oxecpp/v68y2016i2p546-565..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Fertility and economic growth: the role of workforce skill composition and child care prices

Author

Listed:
  • Creina Day

Abstract

This paper presents an overlapping generations model that incorporates choice of occupation (education), fertility, how to rear children, and a market for child care. The dynamic interplay between economic growth and fertility is examined as an economy moves through two phases distinguished by the skill composition of the workforce. In the initial phase, the economy comprises skilled and unskilled workers. In the second phase, all workers are skilled. Skilled workers are shown to have fewer children than less educated workers. Aggregate fertility initially declines as the fraction of skilled workers rises with economic growth, and then may recover as the fertility of a skilled workforce rises with skilled wages, for given child care prices. However, in equilibrium, child care prices rise proportionally to skilled wages when child care is produced with constant returns to skilled labour. Results indicate that whether or not the rise in fertility witnessed in high-income countries will continue depends on each country’s structure of child care.

Suggested Citation

  • Creina Day, 2016. "Fertility and economic growth: the role of workforce skill composition and child care prices," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 68(2), pages 546-565.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:oxecpp:v:68:y:2016:i:2:p:546-565.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/oep/gpw003
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Koichi Futagami & Kunihiko Konishi, 2019. "Rising longevity, fertility dynamics, and R&D-based growth," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 32(2), pages 591-620, April.
    2. Aso, Hiroki, 2021. "A note on the fertility-income relationship and childcare outside home," MPRA Paper 108543, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Ratbek Dzhumashev & Ainura Tursunalieva, 2023. "Social externalities, endogenous childcare costs, and fertility choice," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 36(1), pages 397-429, January.
    4. Yakita, Akira, 2023. "Elderly long-term care policy and sandwich caregivers’ time allocation between child-rearing and market labor," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    5. Kazunobu Muro, 2023. "Endogenous fertility cycles and childcare services," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 19(2), pages 221-247, June.
    6. Ratbek Dzhumashev & Ainura Tursunalieva, 2016. ""Keeping up with the Joneses" and fertility choice," Monash Economics Working Papers 30-16, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    7. Nishant Yonzan & Laxman Timilsina & Inas Rashad Kelly, 2020. "Economic Incentives Surrounding Fertility: Evidence from Alaska's Permanent Fund Dividend," NBER Working Papers 26712, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Akira Yakita, 2018. "Fertility and education decisions and child-care policy effects in a Nash-bargaining family model," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 31(4), pages 1177-1201, October.
    9. Shao‐Hsun Keng, 2024. "The Causal Effect of Financial Crisis and Its Long‐Run Impact on Fertility," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 100(329), pages 188-208, June.

    More about this item

    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:oup:oxecpp:v:68:y:2016:i:2:p:546-565.. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/oep .

    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.