Explaining International Fertility Differences
扩展Barro-Becker模型，纳入人力资本和健康资本决策，发现生产率和税收差异能解释各国生育率和死亡率的不同。
Why do fertility rates vary so much across countries? Why are European fertility rates so much lower than American fertility rates? To answer these questions we extend the Barro—Becker framework to incorporate the decision to accumulate human capital (which determines earnings) and health capital (which determines life span). We find that cross-country differences in productivity and taxes go a long way toward explaining the observed differences in fertility and mortality.