Population Economics

by Assaf Razin, Efraim Sadka

From Malthus to Becker, the economic approach to population growth and its interactions with the surrounding economic environment has undergone a major transformation. Population Economics elucidates the theory behind this shift and the consequences for economic policy.

Razin and Sadka systematically examine the microeconomic implications of people's decisions about how many children to have and how to provide for them on population trends and social issues of population policy. The authors analyze how these decisions affect labor supply, consumption, savings and bequests, investments in human capital, and economic growth, along with related new issues such as migration and income redistribution across generations, in an integrated microeconomic framework.

Population Economics is a thoroughly modern treatment of population economics as a field in public economics. It integrates and extends Marc Nerlove's Household and Welfare Economics of Endogenous Fertility , as well as work written jointly with colleagues that has appeared in various journals and other publications.

275 pages, Hardcover

First published February 2, 1995

Reviews

[Quang-Thanh Tran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most of the models are outdated. However, some insights are still valuable (such as Chapter 3 and Chapter 5) but all the technical stuff seems to have been skipped for audience’s sake. For a more thorough treatment, I’d recommend de la Croix (2012) or Doepke et al (2022).