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

Religion and Fertility : The French Connection

URL des Documents de travail : http://ces.univ-paris1.fr/cesdp/CESFramDP2008.htmClassification JEL : J11, J13, Z12.Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 2008.89 - ISSN : 1955-611XThe dataset "Enquête Mode de Vie des Français" 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.La base de données "Enquête Mode de Vie des Français" constitue la première occasion de mesurer l'impact de la religion et de la religiosité sur les comportements individuels de fécondité en France. En effet, la loi française rend très difficile la collecte et l'exploitation de données religieuses. A l'aide de régressions de Poisson, je montre que les seules variables religieuses qui ont un impact sur la fécondité sont celles mesurant le degré de pratique, la religion d'origine et la croyance n'ont pas d'impact significatifs. Il apparaît que la fécondité d'une femme assistant souvent aux offices religieux (1 fois par semaine) est 24% plus élevée que la fécondité d'une femme n'assistant jamais aux offices. Dans cette étude, l'impact de la culture sur la fécondité ne se limite pas aux variables religieuses. En effet, j'explore deux aspects de la transmission culturelle au sein de la famille : l'influence de la fécondité des parents du répondant et l'impact de la transmission du Sens de la Famille entre générations. Ces deux canaux de transmission sont aussi importants que la religion pour expliquer la fécondité des agents. Les conclusions des modèles Beckeriens sont validées : le revenu de l'homme a un impact positif sur la fécondité de la femme alors que le propre revenu de la femme a un impact négatif. L'éducation de la femme a un impact négatif dans le sens où les femmes les moins éduquées ont moins d'enfants que les autres

Childlessness is high in the US once again, but this time it’s driven by choice, not poverty.

Recent years have seen a rise in childlessness rates in the US close to levels not seen for more than a century. In new research which examines the drivers of childlessness then and now, Thomas Baudin, David de la Croix and Paula E. Gobbi find that while in the early 20th century poverty meant that many women were forced into having fewer children, better education and higher income for women are now the causes of childlessness

Development Policies when Accounting for the Extensive Margin of Fertility

Beyond natural sterility, there are two main types of childlessness: one driven by poverty and another by the high opportunity cost to child-rearing. We argue that taking childlessness and its causes into account matters for assessing the impact of development policies on fertility. We measure the importance of the components of childlessness with a structural model of fertility and marriage. Deep parameters are identified using census data from 36 developing countries. On average, one more year of education decreases poverty-driven childlessness by 0.75 percentage points, but increases opportunity-cost-driven childlessness by 0.57 percentage points from the 9th year of schooling onwards. Neglecting the endogenous response of marriage and childlessness leads to overestimating the effectiveness of family planning policies, except where highly educated mothers are also heavily affected by unwanted births, and to underestimating the effect of promoting gender equality on fertility, except in countries where poverty-driven childlessness is high

Photoactivated surface grafting from PVDF surfaces

International audienceEconomic and easy methods to tune surface properties of polymers as Poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) without altering bulk properties are of major interest for different applications as biotechnological devices, medical implant device. . . UV irradiation appears as one of the simplest, easy and safe method to modify surface properties. In the case of self-initiated grafting, it is generally assumed that the pretreatment of the PVDF surface with UV irradiation can yield alkyl and per-oxy radicals originating from breaking bonds and capable of initiating the subsequent surface grafting polymerizations. Surprisingly, the present work shows that it is possible to obtain polymer grafting using low energetic UV-A irradiation (3.1-3.9 eV) without breaking PVDF bonds. An EPR study has been performed in order to investigate the nature of involved species. The ability of the activated PVDF surface to graft different kinds of hydrophilic monomers using the initiated surface polymerization method has been tested and discussed on the basis of ATR FT-IR, XPS and NMR HRMAS results