Decreasing Fertility, Economic Growth and the Intergenerational Wage Gap

Persistent low fertility rates lead to lower population growth rates and eventually also to decreasing population sizes in most industrialised countries. There are fears that this demographic development is associated with declines in per-capita GDP and possibly also increasing inequality of the wage distribution. We investigate whether this is true in the context of neoclassical growth models, augmented with endogenous fertility decisions and endogenous educational decisions. Furthermore we allow for imperfect substitutability across workers of different age in the production process and learning by doing effects as well as human capital depreciation. In particular, we assess the intergenerational wage redistribution effects which follow after a demographic change to persistent low fertility rates.