Economic Demography

The field of economic demography has expanded in recent years because of the perceived relevance of economic constraints to family formation and to demographic behaviour. [The increased availability of household surveys from countries at all levels of development and the advances of methods for analysing such data have encouraged empirical extensions and the testing of household demand theories.]

This authoritative collection presents in two volumes some of the influential ideas which have helped to adapt economic theory and methods to analysing the determinants and consequences of demographic behaviour and to relating such behaviour to the investments in human capital which account for much of modern economic growth.

It focuses on the following topics: the estimation of wage functions - a key building block for economic demography because it explains how human capital formation affects human productivity and contributes to economic growth; health and longevity, the second most notable source of human capital accumulation; the evolution of the household production model; cooperative and bargaining approaches to the household entity; models dealing with fertility and female labour supply; models which examine the problems of fertility and investments in child quality; an exploration of how gender affects schooling, health and wage-earning potential; the effect on wages of the size and skill of the labour supply; some historical aspects of economic demography; the effects of population growth on economic development; and questions of savings, inheritance and the economic consequences of an aging population.