Three Essays On Economic Growth And Development PDF Download

Old-age support is considered to be an important motivation for people to rear and raise children in China. If this is true, social security could play an important role in affecting people's fertility choices. In Chapter 2, I construct an endogenous fertility choice model embodying such a motivation to investigate the role of social security. Theoretically, social security reduces fertility by mitigating this old-age support motivation. It induces people to invest more in their children instead of bearing more children. Quantitatively, the model explains the fertility variations across provinces, both in villages and in cities. More significantly, the social security tax by itself could explain at least 40% of the rural-urban fertility differences across provinces, on average.