Journal of Population Economics

This study examines on United Kingdom budget data the sensitivity of policy and welfare conclusions to the introduction of quantity constraint on Housing demand within a utility consistent framework. The paper proposes a rationed demographic demand system, based on extension of the idea of virtual price, and presents evidence that such a model could prove useful in the precise estimation of equivalence scales on budget data with limited price variation. The demand parameter estimates and their welfare implications are quite sensitive to the introduction of rationed demand. Unlike in previous studies, the rationed demand system fails to reject linear preferences.

This paper investigates whether international migration increases the religious schooling of children in the home country. I find that migration by a household member from Bangladesh to a Muslim-majority country increases the likelihood that a male child in the household is sent to an Islamic school (madrasa). There is no significant impact on the likelihood of a male child’s madrasa enrollment if the household sends a member to a non-Muslim-majority country. Sending a household member abroad does not affect the likelihood of the household sending children to school at all; it only leads to reallocation toward Islamic schooling. The results are inconsistent with financial remittances underlying the effect of migration on religious schooling. Learning about the potential benefits of madrasa education may explain the results, but there are several weaknesses in the arguments in favor of this mechanism. A third potential mechanism is an increase in religiosity through migrants transferring religious preferences, but I cannot establish a causal relationship between international migration and migrant-sending households’ religiosity.

This paper is inspired by a puzzling empirical fact that, despite the importance of controlling migration for their future, the host countries allocate very limited amounts of resources to the struggle against illegal immigration. The present model analyzes this issue in the context of low fertility in the host countries and suggests a novel channel though which the intensity of the struggle against immigration can be related to fertility. The analysis shows that, for childless individuals, who have no reason to care about the future, it is optimal to contribute less to the costly immigration-prevention measures.

The analysis of 1988–1994 statistical data indicates that the population of Israel simultaneously moves in two opposite directions: while the initial distribution of new immigrants is primarily focused on the areas where jobs are available, the existing population of these areas tends to move outward, to the less populated districts where housing is more available and affordable. The paper thus argues that the heterogeneity of the population is indeed a crucial consideration for the proper modeling of migration behavior. It is also argued that a) the effect of housing construction on the patterns of in-country migration appears to be attenuated, and b) the low attractiveness of peripheral districts of the country to the new immigrants is mainly caused by a lack of jobs rather than by low rates of housing construction or the harsh climatic conditions of these areas.

This paper investigates the relationship between growth and inequality from a demographic point of view. In an extended model of the accidental bequest with endogenous fertility, we analyze the effects of a decrease in old-age mortality rate on the equilibrium growth rate as well as on the income distribution. We show that the relationship between growth and inequality is at first positive and then may be negative in the process of population aging. The results are consistent with the empirical evidence in some developed countries.

This paper examines the impacts of a large and anticipated government transfer, the Russian old-age pension, on labor supply, home production, and subjective wellbeing. The discontinuity in eligibility at pension age is exploited for inference. The 2006–2011 Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey is employed. At pension age, women reduce market work and appear to increase home production. They report increased wellbeing. Men reduce labor supply without any apparent increase in wellbeing. Pension receipt does not impact household composition.

We consider a discrete-time neoclassical growth model with an endogenous rate of population growth. The resulting one-dimensional map for the capital intensity has a tilted z-shape. Using the theory of nonlinear dynamical systems, we obtain numerical results on the qualitative behaviour of time paths for changing parameter values. Besides stable and periodic solutions, erratic time paths may result. In particular, myopic and far-sighted economies — assumed to be characterised by low and high savings rate respectively — are characterised by stable per capita capital stocks, while solutions with chaotic windows exist between these two extremes.

This paper presents a two-period human capital investment model, which is used to study the optimal investment decisions of credit-constrained married immigrants relative to single immigrants and native couples facing a perfect capital market. The model predicts that: (1) The comparative advantage in investment in local skills of one of the spouses may emerge from his/her higher growth rate of imported human capital. (2) The optimal investment of each spouse is non-increasing in the level of imported human capital of the spouse with the comparative advantage in investment, while it is non-decreasing in the level of imported human capital of the other spouse. (3) When two immigrants get married, the spouse with the comparative advantage in investment invests more than when he/she was single whereas the other spouse invests less.