Population growth and human capital: a welfarist approach

In this paper we investigate the relationship between economic and population growth in an endogenous growth model driven by human capital accumulation à la Lucas (1988). Since we allow for endogenous population growth, we adopt the population criterion Relative Critical Level Utilitarianism (an extension of Critical Level Utilitarianism, Blackorby et al. 1995) which allows axiomatically founded welfare orderings under variable population. Under this extension the Critical Level Utility is dependent on parents’ wellbeing. In this scenario we investigate the equilibrium relation between economic growth and population growth as functions of the underlying parameters and we provide the conditions for the economic take-off to occur.