Efficiency with endogenous population growth. Do children have too many rights?

Abstract

Fertility rates are declining in many countries. But are fertility rates inefficiently low? This paper addresses this question by exploring the efficiency properties of equilibria in an overlapping generations setting with endogenous fertility and dynastic parental altruism, using the notion of P ‐efficiency proposed by Golosov, Jones and Tertilt (2007). In contrast to Schoonbroodt and Tertilt (2014), who show that any equilibrium for which nonnegativity constraints on intergenerational transfers are binding is A ‐inefficient (and, under the assumption that new lives always increase social welfare, also P ‐inefficient), I characterize symmetric, P ‐efficient allocations as the equilibria arising from different distribution of rights among the agents, and show that many equilibria exhibiting binding constraints on transfers are P ‐efficient. To be more precise, except for dynamically inefficient equilibria, there is no need to alter children's rights so as to achieve efficiency.