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The Journal of Population Economics is celebrating its 30th birthday. When the first issue was published, population economics was non-existent as a field. Hence, the aim has been to provide a high-quality outlet to publishing excellent theoretical and applied research in all areas of population economics. The article summarizes key developments in the Journal's editorial process, thematic orientation, international reach, and successes. Furthermore, we discuss the benefits of working papers in economics and investigate the impacts of the current working paper culture on journal citations. Finally, we try to identify the citation impacts in the Journal itself. The Journal of Population Economics has established itself as the leader in its field. Publishing in working papers and in the Journal seem to be complementary activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides evidence on how adverse health conditions affect the transfer of human capital from one generation to the next. We explore the differential exposure to HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa as a substantial health shock to both household and community environment. We utilize the recent rounds of the Demographic and Health Surveys for 11 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. First, we find that an additional year of maternal education leads to a 0.37-year increase in children's years of schooling in the developing economies in sub-Saharan Africa. Second, our results show that mother's HIV status has substantial detrimental effects on inheritability of human capital. We find that the association between infected mothers' and their children's human capital is 30 % less than the general population. Finally, focusing only on noninfected mothers and their children, we show that HIV prevalence in the community also impairs the intergenerational human capital transfers even if mother is HIV negative. The findings of this paper are particularly distressing for these already poor, HIV-torn countries as in the future they will have even lower overall level of human capital due to the epidemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent paper, Hashimoto and Tabata (J Popul Econ 23:571-593, ) present a theoretical model in which the increase in the rate of dependence due to aging of the population leads to a reallocation of labor from non-health to health production and, as a consequence, to a decline in economic growth. We argue that these results rely heavily on assumptions of a 'small economy' and perfect capital mobility, which tie down the amount of capital. In this paper, we proceed by analyzing the case of an economy in which the availability of capital is endogenously determined by domestic savings. We find that the new 'capital accumulation effect' is opposite to the previous 'dependency rate effect,' leaving the effect on economic growth ambiguous. In particular, if the former prevailed, population aging would foster economic growth, a result that finds support in recent empirical work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper theoretically studies how unfunded pay-as-you-go social security affects economic growth, the fertility rate, and welfare in a neoclassical growth model. In addition, this paper considers a more general form of child-rearing cost, which is a mixture of time and money. The first observation is that whether the fertility rate increases or not by the expansion of the pay-as-you-go social security depends on (1) the size of the monetary child-rearing cost relative to the time spent on child-rearing and (2) the current fertility and interest rate in laissez faire. The second observation is that income per worker can increase by an expansion in pay-as-you-go social security when the output elasticity of capital is sufficiently small and the payroll tax rate is high. The last finding is that welfare can be improved even though capital is underaccumulated in an economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes a global, long-run perspective on the recent debate about secular stagnation, which has so far mainly focused on the short term. The analysis is motivated by observing the interplay between the economic and demographic transition that has occurred in the developed world over the past 150 years. To the extent that high growth rates in the past have partly been the consequence of singular changes during the economic and demographic transition, growth is likely to become more moderate once the transition is completed. At the same time, a similar transition is on its way in most developing countries, with profound consequences for the development prospects in these countries, but also for global comparative development. The evidence presented here suggests that long-run demographic dynamics have potentially important implications for the prospects of human and physical capital accumulation, the evolution of productivity, and the question of secular stagnation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Broadband (high-speed) internet access expanded rapidly from 1999 to 2007 and is associated with higher economic growth and labor market activity. In this paper, we examine whether the rollout also affected the social connections that teens make. Specifically, we look at the relationship between increased broadband access and teen fertility. We hypothesize that increasing access to high-speed internet can influence fertility decisions by changing the size of the market as well as increasing the information available to participants in the market. We seek to understand both the overall effect of broadband internet on teen fertility and the mechanisms underlying this effect. Our results suggest that increased broadband access explains at least 7 % of the decline in the teen birth rate between 1999 and 2007. Although we focus on social markets, this work contributes more broadly to an understanding of how new technology interacts with existing markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the role of energy use is incorporated into unified growth theory. The paper presents some interesting evidence about the evolution of energy in the transition from stagnation to growth, and it subsequently develops a growth model where the observed increase in conversion efficiency in the coal energy sector is explicitly modelled and calibrated to existing data over the period 1800-1970. The quantitative analysis sheds light on the impact of energy use on the transition from stagnation to growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how spouses in dual-earner couples weigh each partner's expected wage growth in the decision to migrate. Previous research suggests that husbands' job prospects dominate the migration choice irrespective of their relative earnings potential. Based on British panel data, this paper employs an endogenous switching model and estimates wage differentials of migrating vs. staying for husbands and wives corrected for double selectivity of migration and employment. Dual-earner couples attach a positive weight to each partner's expected wage gains when deciding to migrate. Moreover, migrant wives' employment decreases temporarily, and there are significant selection effects in migration and employment amongst non-migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops an overlapping generations model including (1) a productive externality as an engine of endogenous growth and (2) wage setting by trade unions as the cause of unemployment. Within this framework, the paper considers growth and unemployment affected by public pensions under the following two types of pension system: the proportionate pension system where only the contributors, that is, the employed, receive pensions, and the lump-sum pension system where both the employed and the unemployed receive pensions. It is shown that public pensions create a trade-off between growth and employment in the former system, whereas they produce no trade-off in the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes a social security policy with public debt in an overlapping generations growth model. In particular, the paper considers a situation in which population aging causes a heavy burden of social security payments where public debt is issued by the government to finance the payment. In the model presented below, an economy with an aging population may achieve two dynamically inefficient equilibria. Under certain conditions, the effects of pension reform and population aging on capital accumulation are entirely different between the two equilibria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of population growth on long-term economic development are obviously important. This paper introduces new predictions from a general Malthus-Boserup model of population growth and ideas-based technological change. It also tests these predictions using numerous data sources, empirical specifications, and sample periods. Time series tests reveal that the empirical associations that hold true in the modern era are completely reversed in pre-modern samples. Inferences drawn from the pre-modern population growth of geographically isolated populations are also reversed when relevant controls are taken into account. While there is a clear break with Malthusian theory, in general, and especially outside of the modern era, there is no unequivocal evidence supporting Boserupian views. An alternative model consistent with transitional demographic patterns is briefly discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fraction of U.S. college graduate women who ever marry has increased relative to less educated women since the mid-1970s. In contrast, college graduate women in developed Asian countries have had decreased rates of marriage, so much so that the term 'Gold Misses' has been coined to describe them. This paper argues that the interaction of rapid economic growth in Asia combined with the intergenerational transmission of gender attitudes causes the 'Gold Miss' phenomenon. I present a simple dynamic model then test its implications using U.S. and Asian data on marriage and time use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A lack of cultural integration is often blamed for hindering immigrant families' economic progression. This paper explores whether there are in fact long-term consequences by investigating intergenerational effects of parental ethnic identity on the next generation's human capital accumulation. Results based on longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) indicate a positive role of both parental majority as well as minority identity. I find differential parental roles with impacts of majority identity working through mothers and minority identity effects being specific to fathers. While the positive effect of maternal majority identity appears to be closely related to language skills, the beneficial effect of paternal minority identity is consistent throughout various robustness checks and likely to be related to higher levels of children's feelings of self-esteem. Overall, the results point at integrated, rather than separated or assimilated family environments to be most conductive for educational success of the second generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-marital cohabitation is a rapidly growing global phenomenon. Prior literature examines the puzzling empirical regularity that premarital cohabitation is associated with higher divorce rates. Since cohabitation should yield improved match-quality information, one might expect the opposite. This result, and its recent weakening, have been explored empirically and produced theoretically using matching models. In this paper, we develop an intra-household bargaining model of alternative dating and cohabitation paths to marriage in which higher relationship exit costs for cohabitors relative to daters generates the observed higher divorce rate. We also show that asymmetric exit costs can produce rejection and generate exits that would not otherwise occur. In addition, we show that even when cohabitors have lower average marriage quality, expected utility for a given match quality is higher, and some utility enhancing marriages that would not have taken place without cohabitation will occur in its presence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the causal effect of improvements in health on economic development using a long panel of European countries. Identification is based on the particular timing of the introduction of public health care systems in different countries, which is the random outcome of a political process. We document that the introduction of public health care systems had a significant immediate effect on health dynamics proxied by infant mortality and crude death rates. The findings suggest that health improvements had a positive effect on growth in income per capita and aggregate income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computable general equilibrium (CGE) models and 'convergence models' differ in their assessment of the extent to which demography influences economic growth. Here, I show that CGE models produce results similar to those of convergence models when more detailed demographic information is used. To do so, I implement a CGE model to explain Taiwan's economic miracle during the period 1965-2005. I find that Taiwan's demographic transition accounts for 22 % of per capita output growth and 17.7 % of investment rate for the period 1965-2005. Moreover, this paper confirms most of the literature written on the role of demography on per capita output growth and saving rates since the seminar article by Coale and Hoover (). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings together the development literature on land tenure with current research on population and long-run growth. Landowners make a decision between fixed rent, fixed wage, and sharecropping contracts to hire tenants to operate their land. The choice of tenure contract affects the share of output going to tenants, and within a simple unified growth model, this affects the relative price of food and therefore fertility. Fixed wage contracts elicit the lowest fertility rate and fixed rent contracts the highest, with sharecropping as an intermediate case. The implications of this for long-run growth depend on the assumptions one makes about scale effects in the aggregate economy. With increasing returns to scale, as in several models of innovation, fixed rent contracts imply higher growth through a market size effect. Without such increasing returns, though, fixed rent contracts reduce output per capita through a depressing effect on accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how the decisions of individuals to have children and acquire skills affect long-term growth. We investigate a model in which technical progress, human capital, and population arise endogenously. In such an economy, the presence of distortions (such as monopolistic competition, knowledge spillover, and duplication effects) leads the decentralized long-run growth to be either insufficient or excessive. We show that this result depends on the relative contribution of population and human capital in the determination of long-term growth, i.e., on how the distortions affect the trade-off between the quantity of offsprings and the quality of the family members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a politico-economic theory that explains how an economy evolves when the longevity of its citizens is jointly determined with the process of economic development. We propose a three-period overlapping generation model where agents' decisions embrace two dimensions: a private choice about education and a public one on innovation policy. We find that (a) poverty traps can emerge in human capital accumulation, (b) higher life expectancy increases the incentive to innovate for both young and adults, (c) different political configurations can arise depending on endogenous demographic structures and (d) the steady state can entertain both innovation and its absence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the optimal linear tax-transfer policy in an economy where agents differ in productivity and in genetic background and where longevity depends on health spending and genes. If agents internalize imperfectly the impact of health spending on longevity, the utilitarian optimum can be decentralized with type-specific lump-sum transfers and Pigouvian taxes correcting for agents' myopia and for their misperception of health spending's effects on the economy's resources. The second-best problem is examined under linear taxation instruments. It may be optimal to tax health spending, especially under complementarity of genes and health spending in the production of longevity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of high welfare re-entry rates has attracted great attention from economists and policymakers. Using a very rich administrative data set for the minimum income program of the Madrid Government (over 50,000 spells), this paper aims to broach various questions arising from the issue of welfare re-entry. We try to identify what factors determine observed differences in the durations of the first off-welfare spell. We analyze the combined effects of the length and type of exit of the first spell, unemployment, and sociodemographic characteristics. The experience of the first spell and, to a lesser extent, employability can contribute toward lengthening the time spent outside the program. Our results also show that off-welfare spells of households leaving the program in periods of low economic growth will be longer than those that do so during economic expansions. With the exception of unemployment effects, our estimates yield very similar results to those obtained in the U.S. studies, suggesting that U.S. welfare policies and analyses are not entirely irrelevant for European discussions of welfare policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine the effects of mortality decline on fertility and human capital investment decision of parents taking into account the uncertainty about child survival. I propose a model, where parents decide on their fertility before the uncertainty is realized, but they choose to invest only in human capital of their surviving children. The model implies a positive relationship between mortality and fertility and a negative one between mortality and educational investment. It has been argued elsewhere that as, in reality, most of the mortality decline occurred in infancy, it should not affect the human capital investment decision, which comes later in life. Thus, increased survival chances should not promote growth by raising the human capital investment. This paper argues the contrary and proposes a mechanism where mortality decline at any age before the teen years can promote growth by raising human capital investment regardless of the timing of the educational investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that savings behaviour and worker productivity have strong life-cycle components and given that demographic profiles vary across countries, population age structure should be linked to differences in levels of economic development. In this paper, we measure the economic importance of age structure variation for the global economy. We find that demographic maturation has been associated with nearly half of the evolution of global per capita GDP since 1960. We also find that age structure differences can account for just over half of the variation in worldwide per capita GDP (i.e. the lack of sigma convergence) observed since 1960. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines recent changes in weekly income levels and dispersion for Māori, New Zealand’s indigenous ethnic group. Changes in the Māori income distribution between 1997 and 2003 reflect rapid increases in economic growth and employment rate. A reduced proportion of people had zero or benefit-level incomes and a higher proportion had high incomes. Income inequality declined for working-aged Māori and was stable for employed Māori. The average income gap between Māori and Europeans declined. The increased Māori employment rate during this period was the single most important driver of changes in the Māori income distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a flexible framework for modeling population's role in economic growth by assessing and extending a rendering suggested by several Harvard economists. Our framework includes a ``productivity'' model explaining output-per-worker growth and a ``translation'' model translating that growth into per-capita terms. We specify a core economic model and several ``enriched'' demographic variants that include dependency, size, and density. Regressions using a cross-country panel spanning the period 1960-1995 reveal that combined impacts of demographic change have accounted for approximately 20% of per capita output growth impacts, with larger shares in Asia and Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how social security interacts with growth and growth determinants (savings, human capital investment, and fertility). Our empirical investigation finds that the estimated coefficient on social security is significantly negative in the fertility equation, insignificant in the saving equation, and significantly positive in the growth and education equations. By contrast, the estimated coefficient on growth is insignificant in the social security equation. The results suggest that social security may indeed be conducive to growth through tipping the trade-off between the number and quality of children toward the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the role of mortality in the long transition from Malthusian stagnation to sustained economic growth. An endogenous child mortality rate that varies inversely with parents’ standard of living is added to the framework in Galor and Weil (AER 2000). In our version of the model, the transition from stagnation to growth, triggered by an exogenous shock to technology, comprises a ‘mortality revolution’ succeeded by a ‘demographic transition’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decades, due to a combination of declining fertility rates and rising life expectancies, most industrialized countries have experienced aging populations and low numbers of young populations that may pose economic problems in the future. This paper investigates the relationship first between fertility rate and infant mortality rate and second among demographic changes, real wages and real output in Greece over the period 1960–96. When we control for fluctuations in overall economic activity and the labor market on the bivariate relationship between fertility and mortality rates, the evidence suggests that Granger-causation must exist in at least one direction. The results show that in the long run a decrease in infant mortality rates, taking into consideration economic performance and the labor market, causes a reduction in fertility rates. Also, employing the vector error-correction models, the variance decomposition analysis and the impulse response functions, the empirical results support the endogeneity of fertility choice to infant mortality, the labor market and the growth process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops and estimates an empirical model of the interplay between fertility and economic development. Using panel data, this study finds that a one-percent decrease in population growth increases GDP per capita growth by more than three percent. In addition, because families with low levels of human capital choose to have more children, income per capita grows faster in developed countries than in developing countries. Finally, this study shows that the estimates of the interplay between fertility and output obtained from single cross-country regressions are biased downward because that method of estimation is unable to control for unobservable country effects and measurement errors. The neoclassical approach fails to account for these effects. The present study contributes to the now-standard growth model, and provides a better description of international differences in standards of living. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical research on the determinants of emigration from the LDCs has so far given little emphasis to the complex relationship of development and migration. Since the beginning of the 1990s several arguments have been put forth which hint at the possibility that in the early stages of development economic progress might lead to more migration, even if income differentials to the potential destination regions decrease. This paper presents these arguments and tests them for the case of migration to Germany from 86 Asian and African countries from 1981 to 1995. The results confirm the importance of financial restrictions on migration, migration networks, and changes in the societal structure of the sending countries as well as the existence of a home preference. The estimations also control for the political situation in the home countries and for institutional measures in the host country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that financial intermediation can influence fertility and labor allocation decisions by raising market wages. The increase in wages induces some households to abandon “traditional” labor intensive methods of production managed at the household level and supply labor to “modern” sector firms. Since it is optimal for households in the modern sector to have fewer children, the labor allocation decision leads to lower national fertility. A panel VAR using financial intermediation, fertility and industrial employment share data in 87 countries is estimated. The empirical results show that the data are consistent with the theoretical predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This note shows that the long-run effect in the case of a low skill trap in Bräuninger and Vidal (Journal of Population Economics (2000) 13:387–401) contains a mistake. While not affecting the paper's basic intuition, this implies that the discussion in the short-run analysis also applies in the long-run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]