سرمایه انسانی و توسعه اقتصادی

This paper develops a general equilibrium model of fertility and human capital investment with young adult mortality. Because young adult mortality is negatively related to average young adult human capital, human capital accumulation lowers mortality, inducing demographic transition and industrial revolution. Data confirm that young adult mortality is related negatively to schooling, and the rate of return to schooling, and positively to fertility. The data indicate a negative relationship between TFP growth and schooling accumulation. The model fits the data on country populations, per capita incomes, human capital, total fertility rates, infant mortality, life expectancy and conditional life expectancy.

This paper develops a general equilibrium model of fertility and human capital investment choice under uncertainty. Uncertainty exists because not all young adults survive to old age.1 Parents maximize utility arising from their own consumption, their fertility and the discounted utility of consumption of their children. Fertility depends positively on the probability of an early death, or a young adult death. Because human capital investments are made prior to the realization of survival from young adult to old adult, higher young adult mortality, by increasing the number of children born, reduces human capital investment in each child. This is the standard Becker and Lewis (1973) interaction of quality and quantity of children. If young adult mortality depends on the average human capital of young adults, then an endogenous demographic transition occurs. The economy evolves from high mortality, high fertility, slow human capital accumulation, and slow (if any) economic growth to low mortality, low fertility, rapid human capital accumulation and rapid economic growth. Human capital accumulation reduces young adult mortality, which in turn induces lower fertility. Lower fertility reduces the cost of human capital investment, and thus parents increase their human capital investments per child. This leads to a virtuous cycle in which human capital growth leads to lower fertility and more rapid human capital growth.

The paper presents a general equilibrium model of human capital investment and fertility. When young adult mortality is a function of the average human capital of young women in the population, human capital accumulation produces a Demographic Transition to an Industrial Revolution. High young adult mortality regimes induce mothers to have high fertility and raise the cost of child quality. Human capital accumulation eventually lowers young adult mortality. Falling young adult mortality produces falling fertility. Lower levels of fertility reduce the cost of human capital investments, and hence the rate of human capital accumulation accelerates.