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Who Owns Children and Does It Matter?

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Abstract

In this paper a particular market failure that may lead to inefficiently low equilibrium fertility and therefore to a need for government intervention are analysed. The friction which is investigated is related to the ownership of children. If parents have no claim on their children’s income, then the private benefit from producing a child may be smaller than the social benefit. We present an overlapping-generations (OLG) model with fertility choice and altruism, and model ownership by introducing a minimum constraint on transfers from parents to children.

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  • Alice Schoonbroodt, 2010. "Who Owns Children and Does It Matter?," Working Papers id:2360, eSocialSciences.
    • Handle: RePEc:ess:wpaper:id:2360
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    1. Should we own our children?
      by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2010-02-16 21:13:00

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    1. Renaud Bourlès & Bruno Ventelou & Maame Esi Woode, 2018. "Child Income Appropriations as a Disease-Coping Mechanism: Consequences for the Health-Education Relationship," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(1), pages 57-71, January.
    2. Juan Cordoba & Marla Ripoll & Xiying Liu, 2019. "Accounting for the International Quantity-Quality Trade-off," 2019 Meeting Papers 156, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. Schoonbroodt, Alice & Tertilt, Michèle, 2014. "Property rights and efficiency in OLG models with endogenous fertility," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 551-582.
    4. Pensieroso, Luca & Sommacal, Alessandro, 2014. "Economic development and family structure: From pater familias to the nuclear family," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 80-100.
    5. Juan Carlos Córdoba & Marla Ripoll, 2016. "Intergenerational Transfers and the Fertility–Income Relationship," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(593), pages 949-977, June.
    6. Kevin Luo & Tomoko Kinugasa & Kai Kajitani, 2018. "Dynamic efficiency in world economy," Discussion Papers 1801, Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    children; altruism; child; parents; Overlapping generations; Fertility; Efficiency; market failure; social security;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics
    • E1 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models
    • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth

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