A Role for Cultural Transmission in Fertility Transitions

The paper proposes an economic and cultural mechanism that can predict a fertility transition and its timing. The cultural structure of the population is endogenously determined by a cultural evolution mechanism. The fertility rates reduction in the long run is always the result of an interaction between the cultural and economic structures of the society. Permanent productivity schocks have to distort sufficiently the cultural structure of the population to make acceptable modern behaviours (in term of fertility) to the traditionalist parents. An increase in the average income level provoked by the technological progress will be necessary but not sufficient condition to undergo a fertility transition. Finally, a fertility transition can always appear in the economy whathever the initial cultural structure but that cultural structure determines the timing of the transition.Fertility, transition, preferences transmission, cultural evolution, endogenous fertility.

Family policies : what does the standard endogenous fertility model tell us ?

Very few studies have explored the optimality properties of the "standard model" of fertility where parents must determine their optimal trade-off between quality and quantity. The present paper works to fill that gap and find three main results. First, when there exist positive externalities in the accumulation of human capital, it is optimal to subsidize education and to tax births. Second, when the Social Welfare Function does not consist of the average utility, the social returns on educational in- vestments can be weaker than the private returns when the optimal population growth rate is negative. In this case, the optimal economic policy consists in subsidizing births and taxing education. Finally, when the health expenditure is introduced as another source of positive externalities, it can be optimal to tax the parental health expenditure to decentralize the first-best path even if this expenditure is always too low at the laissez-faire equilibrium.fertility, education, family policy, mortality, quality quantity trade-off

Religion and Fertility : The French Connection

The dataset "Enqute Mode de Vie des Franais" is the first opportunity to measure the impact of religion and religiosity on individual fertility behaviors in France. Indeed, the French laws make it very difficult to collect data on the individual's religious variables. With Poisson regressions, I show that religiosity is the sole religious variable which significantly influences fertility. To have been raised in a religious family and to be a believer do not matter either. The estimated fertility of a woman assisting offices every week is 24% higher that the expected fertility of a woman who never assist to offices. Culture is not investigated only through the impact of religion on fertility. Indeed, I explore the influence of parental fertility on the respondent's own fertility and the transmission of "Family Ties" among generations. I find that these two channels are as important as religious variables to explain fertility. Among the conclusions of usual family, economics, I find that male income has a positive impact on female fertility whereas the female income has a negative impact. The women's education negatively influences fertility in the sense that the least educated women have more children than others.Fertility, France, religion, religiosity, cultural transmission, family ties, Applied Microeconometrics.

The optimal trade-off between quality and quantity with uncertain child survival

The present paper investigates a standard model of endogenous fertility when child survival to adulthood is uncertain. In this framework, I first show that facing the risk their children die before reaching adulthood, parents don’t always formulate a precautionary demand for children. Indeed, there exists a non-empty set of utility functions for which parents undershoot their number of children rather than overshooting it. Second, the properties of the optimal economic policy will crucially depend on the manner the Social Welfare Function takes uncertainty into account. More precisely, if Social Welfare is evaluated after the resolution of uncertainty, the parental response to uncertainty is a source of social inefficiency. Then, individual decisions have to be corrected through tax or transfer on both births and education. This property becomes crucial to determine the optimal public response to a mortality crisis in presence of positive externalities on education.fertility, uncertain child survival, optimal conditions, family policy

Family policies : what does the standard endogenous fertility model tell us ?

There exists a large consensus in the economic literature and in the economic institutions about the legitimacy of policies subsidizing education. This legitimacy lies in the fact that education is a source of positive externalities. In a standard framework of endogenous fertility, the present paper shows that this result is still valid but that subsidizing education also requires to tax births. Indeed, education subsidies decrease the net cost of children such that parents can exhibit a too high fertility rate. Furthemore, when health is introduced as another source of externalities, the model shows that health expenditures have not always to be subsidized. Indeed, the taxation of births plays the role of an indirect subsidy on health expenditures because it decreases the cost of health relatively to the cost of the quantity of children. When the externalities on education are very high relatively to the positive externalities on health, the indirect subsidy on health can exceed the subsidy that is really needed. Then health expenditures have to be taxed. This results are discussed in the light of family policies implemented in China and Sub-Saharan Africa.Fertility, education, health, family policy, taxation, mortality.

Family Policies: What Does The Standard Endogenous Fertility Model Tell Us?

Very few studies have explored the optimality properties of the "standard model" of fertility where parents must determine their optimal trade-off between quality and quantity. The present paper works to fill that gap and find three main results. First, when there exist positive externalities in the accumulation of human capital, it is optimal to subsidize education and to tax births. Second, when the Social Welfare Function does not consist of the average utility, the social returns on educational investments can be weaker than the private returns when the optimal population growth rate is negative. In this case, the optimal economic policy consists in subsidizing births and taxing education. Finally, when the health expenditure is introduced as another source of positive externalities, it can be optimal to tax the parental health expenditure to decentralize the first-best path even if this expenditure is always too low at the laissez-faire equilibrium.Fertility, Education, Family Policy, Mortality, Quality Quantity Trade-off

A consistent deterministic regression tree for non-parametric prediction of time series

We study online prediction of bounded stationary ergodic processes. To do so, we consider the setting of prediction of individual sequences and build a deterministic regression tree that performs asymptotically as well as the best L-Lipschitz constant predictors. Then, we show why the obtained regret bound entails the asymptotical optimality with respect to the class of bounded stationary ergodic processes