The old-age security motive for fertility postulates that people's needs for old-age support raise the demand for children. We test this widespread idea using the extension of social pensions in Namibia during the nineties. The reform eliminated inequalities in pension coverage and benefit...

This study identifies the causal effect of pension generosity on women's fertility behavior. It capitalizes on Brazil's expansion of the pension system to rural workers, whose pension wealth subsequently more than tripled. Event study, difference-in-differences and instrumental variable methods...

Conventional pension systems suffer from a design defect which makes them financially unsustainable, and a source of inefficiency for the economy as a whole. The paper outlines a second-best policy which includes a public pension system made up of two parallel schemes, a Bismarckian one allowing...

Why do people have kids in developed societies? We propose an empirical test of two alternative theories - children as "consumptionʺ vs. "investmentʺ good. We use as a natural experiment the Italian pension reforms of the 90s that introduced a clear discontinuity in the treatment across...

This paper provides a unified treatment of externalities associated with fertility and human capital accumulation as they relate to pension systems. It considers as overlapping generations model in which every generation consists of high earners and low earners with the proportion of types being...

Conventional pension systems suffer from a design defect which makes them financially unsustainable, and a source of inefficiency for the economy as a whole. The paper outlines a second-best policy which includes a public pension system made up of two parallel schemes, a Bismarckian one allowing...

The stock of public debt in some developed countries continues to increase because of a lack of tax revenues and the burdens of social security. Many of those developed countries suffer from lower birth rates. Child allowances might help to raise fertility, leading to higher tax revenue in the...

The public debt stock in some economically developed countries continues to increase because of a lack of tax revenues and the concomitant burdens of social security. Many of those countries suffer from lower birth rates and consequently, have fewer children. Child allowances might be an...

van Groezen, Leers and Meijdam (2003) (for short, GLM) analyzed combination of public pension and child support in an OLG model. We impose credit constraint on workers, and extend GLM's analysis from the case where workers do not understand the cost also to the case where they do. GLM's infinite...

Fertility has long been declining in industrialised countries and the existence of public pension systems is considered as one of the causes. This paper is the first to provide detailed evidence based on historical data on the mechanism by which a public pension system depresses fertility. Our...