E2025001                                                                                     2025-02-15

Junjian Yi   Zikun Zhou

Abstract

This paper develops a unified growth model that integrates endogenous R&D with the child quantity-quality trade-off to examine the long-term relationship between population dynamics and economic growth. We demonstrate how technological progress affects the relative returns to human capital versus unskilled labor and influences parents’decisions on fertility and child human capital investments. These decisions drive population growth and human capital supply, and lead the economy through four phases: Malthusian, prosperous, aging, and stagnating. Our model uniquely predicts that technological progress endogenously generates low fertility rates and population aging, and ultimately constrains economic growth. This outcome results from a market failure: Parents cannot internalize the positive externality of fertility at the societal level.
 

JEL classification: J11, J13, O11, O30, O40

Key words: Child quantity-quality trade-off; endogenous R&D; human capital; population aging; economic growth

讨论稿原文下载 ../../../../docs/20250220100149308916.pdf