Author : Anson Zhou
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (134 download)
Book Synopsis Essays on Integrating Families and Demographics Into Macroeconomics by : Anson Zhou
Download or read book Essays on Integrating Families and Demographics Into Macroeconomics written by Anson Zhou and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this dissertation, I integrate families and demographic structure into macroeconomics and use these methods to study family policies and intergenerational mobility. The first chapter develops a heterogeneous-agent overlapping generations model to study the macroeconomic consequences of family policies. The model integrates the quantity-quality trade- off, a multi-period demographic structure, and childcare choices. I calibrate the model to U.S. data and validate the magnitude of the model's predictions using the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend (APFD). In counterfactuals, I find that raising aggregate fertility to the replacement level requires a $30,000 cash reward to childbirth, but such a policy reduces average human capital and intergenerational mobility. Nevertheless, average well-being rises by 1.6% in the long run as the old- age dependency ratio drops, requiring lower taxes to sustain retirement benefits. Compared with cash rewards, in-kind benefits are less cost-effective in raising fertility but have other advantages: subsidized childcare encourages parents to work, while expansions of public education improve children's human capital and intergenerational mobility. The second chapter explores the role of unintended fertility in perpetuating intergenerational persistence of socioeconomic status. Nearly 40% of births in the United States are unintended, and this phenomenon is disproportionately common among Black Americans and women with lower education. Given that being born to unprepared parents significantly affects children's outcomes, could family planning access affect intergenerational persistence of economic status? We extend the standard Becker-Tomes model by incorporating an endogenous family planning choice. When the model is calibrated to match observed patterns of unintended fertility, we find that intergenerational mobility is significantly lower than that in the standard model. In a policy counterfactual where states improve access to family planning services for the poor, intergenerational mobility improves by 0.3 standard deviations on average. When we calibrate the model to match unintended birth rates by race, we find that differences in family planning access alone can account for 20% of the racial gap in upward mobility.