Altruism and Endogenous Fertility

This paper contains an investigation of the modern literature on economic growth and endogenous fertility. The review of the most influential economic models is aimed at explaining the main forces that have been proposed as triggers for the so called demographic transition (that is the passage from a state of high fertility and economic growth to another one characterized by low fertility); children quality in the form of human capital, infant mortality and the introduction of social security systems will be fully analysed in this work. Moreover, a special attention is devoted one of the most famous model that is able to incorporate fertility choices into agents’ behaviour, the Barro-Becker (1989) model. Finally, a data analysis will investigate the income-population relation, both on a Global and Regional perspective, in order to understand the inner causes of the demographic transition