بعد از
یک وقفه در برنامه سمینارهای اقتصادی شریف، دور جدید این برنامه ها با ارائه
مطلبی از فرید فرخی پیگیری میشود:
تاثیر یارانه ها بر تحولات جمعیت و سرمایه انسانی در ایران
ارائه دهنده: فرید فرخی
استاد ناظر: دکتر فرهاد نیلی
مکان
برگزاری جلسه: اتاق سمینار دانشکده مدیریت و اقتصاد دانشگاه شریف
زمان
برگزاری جلسه: سه شنبه 1389/1/24 ساعت 13:00
Abstract:
How Subsidies Have Shaped Evolution of Fertility and
Human Capital in the Iranian Economy?
Two interrelated facts in the Iranian economy during
recent decades need explanation. Fertility rate in one hand fell sharply from 7
births per women in 1979 to 1.9 in 2006. On the other hand, human capital has
been growing steadily while both the inequality of human capital and fertility
differential were decreasing during the past decades.
We account for these facts by proposing a new link
between "subsidies financed by oil revenue" and "the evolution
of population and human capital". To illustrate the results, we calibrate
the model economy aligned with the relevant data and simulate the impact of
trial policies of allocating subsidies on human capital and fertility.
De la Croix and Dopeke (AER, 2003) have accounted
for the U-shaped relation between growth and inequality induced by differential
fertility. The higher income inequality in their model leads to wider
differential fertility because poor and rich would decide differently for
quantity and quality of their children. Consequently in the next generation,
the rise of workers with lower quality will lead to less human capital on
average and lesser growth.
We augment the de la Croix-Doepke model in the presence
of the budget constraint of a government who besides tax revenue sells oil. It
allocates its budget to public spending and subsidizing private consumption and
education.
The fertility transition states that the more human
capital parent have, the more income they earn, the higher opportunity cost of
time they bear, the higher opportunity cost of raising children they face, and
consequently the fewer children they make. On the contrary, in Iran's economy,
one observes a growing human capital without decline of fertility for some
decades followed by a rapid fall in fertility without a higher growth of human
capital during next decades.
According to our findings, the availability of subsidies
financed by oil revenues changes the conventional solution of quantity-quality
problem for two reasons. Firstly, the financial subsidy on the contrary to the
wage income imposes no opportunity cost of time allocation to parents while
increases their income. Secondly, the educational subsidy, by reducing the
price of schooling, brings about more access to education for children and thus
more skilled workers in the next generation.
Initially, the economy has a high fertility and low human
capital. In the next generation, the educational subsidy heightens the growth
of human capital but the presence of financial subsidy preserves the fertility
from declining. Fertility falls with sizeable delay but sharply due to three
reasons. First, because of high fertility in previous generations, population
has increased faster than the growth of oil revenue so subsidy per capita
decreased considerably. Second, due to human capital evolution, the real wage
has increased so that the income effect of financial subsidies on households’
decisions has decreased. Third, thanks to the educational subsidies, human
capital dispersion has declined which causes less differential fertility, less
fertility rate, and higher average of human capital.
Keywords: Fertility transition; Differential
fertility, Human capital evolution; Subsidy; Oil Revenues; Iranian economy
JEL
Classifications: J13, O15, H27, Q39
