{"title":"Old-age support policy and fertility with strategic bequest motives","authors":"Akira Yakita","doi":"10.1007/s00148-024-01024-9","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper presents an analysis of the effects of public old-age support on individuals’ fertility decisions and on the long-term equilibrium in an overlapping generation economy with strategic bequest motives. Parents must pay their adult children at least the reservation wage to receive informal old-age support from them (individual rationality constraint). Formal old-age support is financed through wage taxes on children. The increased present value of formal old-age support tends to increase old-age utility, thereby decreasing the family support demand and decreasing savings for the old age. The increased wage tax reduces the opportunity cost of child-rearing time, thereby increasing the fertility rate. The effects of increased formal old-age support on per-worker capital and labor are indeterminate, as is the effect on the long-term lifetime utility of individuals. A strategic bequest motive might engender a higher fertility rate than that of the social optimum.</p>","PeriodicalId":48013,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Population Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":6.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Population Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-024-01024-9","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper presents an analysis of the effects of public old-age support on individuals’ fertility decisions and on the long-term equilibrium in an overlapping generation economy with strategic bequest motives. Parents must pay their adult children at least the reservation wage to receive informal old-age support from them (individual rationality constraint). Formal old-age support is financed through wage taxes on children. The increased present value of formal old-age support tends to increase old-age utility, thereby decreasing the family support demand and decreasing savings for the old age. The increased wage tax reduces the opportunity cost of child-rearing time, thereby increasing the fertility rate. The effects of increased formal old-age support on per-worker capital and labor are indeterminate, as is the effect on the long-term lifetime utility of individuals. A strategic bequest motive might engender a higher fertility rate than that of the social optimum.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Population Economics is an international quarterly that publishes original theoretical and applied research in all areas of population economics.
Micro-level topics examine individual, household or family behavior, including household formation, marriage, divorce, fertility choices, education, labor supply, migration, health, risky behavior and aging. Macro-level investigations may address such issues as economic growth with exogenous or endogenous population evolution, population policy, savings and pensions, social security, housing, and health care.
The journal also features research into economic approaches to human biology, the relationship between population dynamics and public choice, and the impact of population on the distribution of income and wealth. Lastly, readers will find papers dealing with policy issues and development problems that are relevant to population issues.The journal is published in collaboration with POP at UNU-MERIT, the Global Labor Organization (GLO) and the European Society for Population Economics (ESPE).Officially cited as: J Popul Econ Factor (RePEc): 13.576 (July 2018) Rank 69 of 2102 journals listed in RePEc