2009 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Fertility, growth, and economic policies

Research Project

Project/Area Number	20730182
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Economic policy
Research Institution	Kagawa University
Principal Investigator	MOCHIDA Megumi Kagawa University, 経済学部, 准教授 (60432770)
Project Period (FY)	2008 – 2009
Keywords	経済政策 / 経済成長
Research Abstract	Declining fertility rates threaten the feasibility of current social security systems, thereby posing a serious problem to many advanced countries. On the other hand, as the active life after retirement becomes longer through a higher life-expectancy, the importance of public pensions which stabilize a retired lifestyle is increasing. A part of this study describes how child-allowance policies with Pay-as-you-go systems affect fertility and growth rates by incorporating an uncertain lifetime. It is shown that a current method to subsidize child-rearing households, which determines benefits according to family's number of children, does not always increase the fertility rate. Another part of this study considers the effect of heterogeneity in labor on the policy effects. This point is our originality.