Fertility, income distribution, and economic growth: Theory and cross-country evidence

The theoretical analysis demonstrates that due to borrowing constraints countries with smaller average family size and with more equal distribution of income attain higher per-worker (per-capita) output, The empirical analysis shows that the combined effect of fertility and income distribution is substantial in explaining per-worker (per-capita) output and growth performance across countries. In particular, the negative effect of the labor force (or population) growth rate on economic growth, suggested by the neoclassical growth model, is shown to be insignificant, whereas that of the family size as suggested by the current paper is shown to be significant.