Date and Time: April 1st, 2019, 3:00 pm - 5:00pm
Room: A 101 in the Economics Building (Museum)
Abstract
We model parents´ fertility and child-raising decisions under competition. We show that if the consequences of failure and the intensity of competition are sufficiently high, some potential parents forego having children in the resulting equilibrium. Moreover, parents having children prefer to have only one child and put all their resources into raising that child rather than have multiple children.
This equilibrium is consistent with the recent East Asian fertility experience and, more broadly, shows that competitive pressure, wehn combined with high degree of inequality or poor social protection, can lead to overaccumulation of human capital and low fertility.
About the Speaker
Maxwell Pak is Associate Profesor at the Research Institute of Economics and Management at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu.