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This report shares the findings and lessons learned from an investigation into the economics of disaggregated models for assessing and accrediting informal learners undertaking post secondary education. It presents some key economic and governance challenges for universities to consider in implementing OER assessment and accreditation policies. It also includes discussion of findings from a small-scale survey conducted by two of the authors on perceptions, practices and policies relating to openness in assessment and accreditation in post secondary institutions, with a particular focus on the "OER universitas" (OERu) concept. [This paper was presented at the OpenCourseWare Consortium Global Conference (Ljubljana, Slovenia, April 23-25, 2014).]

To build postsecondary institutions that educate responsible citizens as well as competent employees and consumers, it is important that people must teach and learn themselves about the context--domestic and global--in which work is to be done, and the purposes which economic and technological development serve. One aspect of that context is the tremendous human cost of modern prosperity. A moral inquiry into human suffering is surely at least as important as the passing on of the technical skills needed to keep the machinery in motion. A significant historical example concerns the 10 million inhabitants of the Congo Free State who paid the price for King Leopold II's greed and brutality when he opportunistically forced them into slave labour to extract sap from rubber trees to sell to the embryonic automobile industry in the 1890s. Today, externalization of costs insidiously hides cheap labour, unsafe and unhealthy working conditions, destruction of the environment and ubiquitous toxins which have worked their way up to the top of the food chain in mother's milk. Shockingly, human life has become an externalized cost as a direct consequence of the unsustainable lifestyle of people in North America. Literally millions of people have died or been injured as a result of their extravagant lifestyle which, for example, requires enormous quantities of fossil fuels for transportation and the manufacture of consumer or capital products. Paradoxically, due to their consumption habits and lifestyle, they are assigning a value to human life which can be calculated by dividing the resulting excessive purchases germane to perpetual unsustainable growth divided by the number of casualties who have become victims of the American pursuit of economic advantages. Human life has no price. It is alarming that it is held in such low regard, and it is unconscionable that people in North America pay so little attention to their own culpability in social injustice at home and abroad.

"This paper investigates the association between population age structure, particularly the share of the population in the 'prime saving years' 45-60, and the returns on stocks and bonds. The paper is motivated by the claim that the aging of the 'Baby Boom' cohort in the United States is a key factor in explaining the recent rise in asset values. It also addresses the associated claim that asset prices will decline when this large cohort reaches retirement age and begins to reduce its asset holdings. This paper begins by considering household age-asset accumulation profiles. Data from the Survey of Consumer Finances suggest that while cross-sectional age-wealth profiles peak for households in their early 60s, cohort data on the asset ownership of the same households show a much less pronounced peak.... The paper then considers the historical relationship between demographic structure and real returns on Treasury bills, long-term government bonds, and corporate stock. The results do not suggest any robust relationship between demographic structure and asset returns.... The paper concludes by discussing factors such as international capital flows and forward-looking behavior on the part of market participants that could weaken the relationship between age structure and asset returns in a single nation.", (excerpt)

National contributions to science are influenced by a number of factors, including economic capacity, national scientific priorities, science policy, and institutional settings and cultures. Nations do not have equal opportunities to access the global scientific market, and therefore, often seek out international partners with complementary resources and expertise. This study aims at investigating national collaboration strategies, with a focus on research leadership—measured through corresponding authorship—and its relationship with scientific impact. Results show that countries with higher R&D investments are more scientifically independent, and confirm that international collaboration is positively related to citation impact. However, leadership in international collaboration is inversely related with a countries’ share of international collaboration and there is a very little relationship between citation impact and international leadership. For instance, most countries—and particularly those that have fewer resources—have higher scientific impact when they are not leading. This suggests that, despite increasing global participation in science, most international collaborations are asymmetrical, and that the research system remains structured around a few dominate nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"This paper steps back from the current political debate [in the United States] over the social security trust fund and examines the more general question of how serious a macroeconomic problem aging is and how policy should respond to it. We focus primarily on issues relating to saving and capital accumulation. We do not consider the broader question of whether the current U.S. national saving rate is too high or too low, but focus on the effect of demographic changes on the optimal level of national saving. In addition, we consider the effects of demographic change on productivity growth and the optimal timing of tax collections. Our general conclusion is that demographic changes will improve American standards of living in the near future, but lower them slightly over the very long term. Other things being equal, the optimal policy response to recent and anticipated demographic changes is almost certainly a reduction rather than an increase in the national saving rate.", (excerpt)

Economic crises carry a substantial impact on population health and health systems, but little is known on how these transmit to health workers (HWs). Addressing such a gap is timely as HWs are pivotal resources, particularly during pandemics or the ensuing recessions. Drawing from the empirical literature, we aimed to provide a framework for understanding the impact of recessions on HWs and their reactions. We use a systematic review and best-fit framework synthesis approach to identify the relevant qualitative, quantitative and mixed-methods evidence, and refine an a priori, theory-based conceptual framework. Eight relevant databases were searched, and four reviewers employed to independently review full texts, extract data and appraise the quality of the evidence retrieved. A total of 57 peer-reviewed publications were included, referring to six economic recessions. The 2010-15 Great Recession in Europe was the subject of most (52%) of the papers. Our consolidated framework suggests that recessions transmit to HWs through three channels: (1) an increase in the demand for services; (2) the impacts of austerity measures; and (3) changes in the health labour market. Some of the evidence appeared specific to the context of crises; demand for health services and employment increased during economic recessions in North America and Oceania, but stagnated or declined in Europe in connection with the austerity measures adopted. Burn-out, lay-offs, migration and multiple jobholding were the reactions observed in Europe, but job opportunities never dwindled for physicians during recessions in North America, with nurses re-entering labour markets during such crises. Loss of motivation, absenteeism and abuse of health systems were documented during recessions in low-income countries. Although the impacts of recessions may vary across economic events, health systems, labour markets and policy responses, our review and framework provide an evidence base for policies to mitigate the effects on HWs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A substantial amount of evidence has emerged indicating that a majority of the world's largest multinational enterprises concentrate activities in their home region. However, there are relatively few studies which test whether such concentrations are consistent with economic theory. This paper works to fill the void. It tests whether regional concentrations of OECD exports and outward FDI are consistent with predictions of a gravity model. The empirical evidence provided here indicates that exports are far more regional than the model predicts. As for FDI, the empirical evidence shows that intra-regional FDI in Europe is larger than the model predicts, whereas intra-regional FDI patterns within North America are consistent with gravity. Overall, this paper provides further support for Rugman's thesis that MNEs are best described as regional as opposed to global actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adoption of the shared prosperity goal by the World Bank in 2013 and Sustainable Development Goal 10, on inequality, by the United Nations in 2015 should strengthen the focus of development interventions and cooperation on the income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution. This paper contributes to the incipient literature on within-country allocations of development institutions and assesses the geographic targeting of World Bank projects to the bottom 40 percent. Bivariate correlations between the allocation of project funding approved over 2005–14 and the geographical distribution of the bottom 40 as measured by survey income or consumption data are complemented by regressions with population and other potential factors affecting the within-country allocations as controls. The correlation analysis shows that, of the 58 countries in the sample, 41 exhibit a positive correlation between the shares of the bottom 40 and World Bank funding, and, in almost half of these, the correlation is above 0.5. Slightly more than a quarter of the countries, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa, exhibit a negative correlation. The regression analysis shows that, once one controls for population, the correlation between the bottom 40 and World Bank funding switches sign and becomes significant and negative on average. This is entirely driven by Sub-Saharan Africa and not observed in the other regions. Hence, the significant and positive correlation in the estimations without controlling for population suggests that World Bank project funding is concentrated in administrative areas in which more people live (including the bottom 40) rather than in poorer administrative areas. Furthermore, capital cities receive disproportionally high shares of World Bank funding on average. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are public officials more responsive to requests from affluent or poor constituents? A growing body of evidence suggests that lawmakers are more responsive to the rich when they craft policy. However, some scholars theorize that officials also exhibit a corresponding bias in favor of the poor when they handle casework, essentially giving policy to the rich and services to the poor. In this paper, we test this casework prediction using four experiments in which confederates sent simple requests to state or local officials. In each, our confederates’ reported social classes were randomly assigned and signaled with a brief introductory statement mentioning the sender’s occupation or economic situation. Across our samples, we find precisely-estimated null effects of social class biases: the officials we studied were equally likely to respond regardless of the constituent’s class. These findings raise doubts about whether casework is really a class-biased process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first of a two-part paper, which reviews the evolution of the supply management function from the 18th century to 1940. A second paper will examine the continued evolution of supply management from 1940 until the present. The 1830–1940 period in North America was one of tremendous development for purchasing. It started with occasional reference in management texts and, particularly after 1900, saw the evolution of a host of ideas representing the foundation of today's perspective on supply management. At no time did purchasing practitioners and academics see the function as a narrow buying activity. Clearly, our predecessors were well aware of the benefits of integration and would have been comfortable with today's supply chain management precepts. They also recognized value, cost and price analysis, value analysis, purchasing research, talent management, outsourcing the supply function, supplier relationships, strategy and the need for performance measurement. They strived to contribute effectively to organizational goals and strategies, well aware of the potential impact of their actions on organizational success. An understanding of supply's evolution may not only assist today's supply management practitioners and academics in placing current practices and theories in context but also in charting our future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many people in North America believe that prevailing commission rates for residential real estate brokers are too high, even though such beliefs are not based on a formal model. This paper presents a general equilibrium model of the housing market in which real estate brokers serve as matching intermediaries. We use this model to construct an illustrative example which is calibrated using data consistent with a typical housing market. The example suggests that the commission rate which maximizes aggregate efficiency is considerably below the prevailing rate. Moreover, this finding appears to be robust to changes in the matching process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rising prominence of intra-industry trade and huge multinationals has transformed the way economists think about the gains from trade. In the past, we focused on gains that stemmed either from endowment differences (wheat for iron ore) or inter-industry comparative advantage (David Ricardo's classic example of cloth for port). Today, we focus on three sources of gains from trade: 1) love-of-variety gains associated with intra-industry trade; 2) allocative efficiency gains associated with shifting labor and capital out of small, less-productive firms and into large, more-productive firms; and 3) productive efficiency gains associated with trade-induced innovation. This paper reviews these three sources of gains from trade both theoretically and empirically. Our empirical evidence will be centered on the experience of Canada following its closer economic integration in 1989 with the United States-the largest example of bilateral intra-industry trade in the world-but we will also describe evidence for other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper examines two questions: (1) in a high oil price (and operating cost) environment what are typical breakeven prices for CO2? and, (2) are these prices sufficient to incentivize development of large-scale CCS projects? To address these questions we have developed an engineering-economic model for geological storage of CO2 through EOR. In this paper we briefly describe the performance and cost models for CO2-flood EOR, and use them to estimate the breakeven price for CO2 as a function of significant variables. In particular, the relationship between breakeven CO2 price and oil price is developed for four illustrative cases, all of which are, or were, operating EOR projects in North America. The sensitivity of the breakeven CO2 price to variability and uncertainty in reservoir characteristics and other model input parameters is also examined in detail for one of the cases. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

As part of the study “The burden of rheumatoid arthritis and patient access to treatment”, this paper reviews evidence on the health burden of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in terms of morbidity (DALYs), mortality (% of deaths attributable to RA) and quality of life (utility and loss of QALYs), as well as the economic impact on society. Based on available literature on the prevalence and the cost of RA, combined with economic indicators, the annual cost per patient as well as the total national cost is estimated for Europe and North America (Canada and the United States), as well as Australia, Turkey, the Russian Federation and South Africa. Total costs to society were estimated at €45.3 billion in Europe and at €41.6 billion in the United States. Utility scores were found to be amongst the lowest compared to other diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Our aims in this paper are to broaden explanation of remittance expenditures and to evaluate the positive contributions of remittances, return migrants, or circulating sojourners. Specifically focusing on the situation in ¿home' communities, we illustrate the multifaceted consequences of remittances and migration, emphasizing positive nonmonetary and social impacts." Data are from ethnographic research carried out in 1992-1993 in Santa Ana del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico., (excerpt)

"The U.S. economy experienced significant increases in the degree of income inequality over the past two decades.... In this paper we consider the effects of race, age, female headship, and college education on the distribution of family income by developing a multivariate methodology that allows us to gauge the influence of one factor while holding other determinants of family incomes constant. Over the period studied we find that race had only a minor effect on the overall size distribution of income. Age had a somewhat greater effect than race. In contrast, the impact of female heads and college education were quite substantial. The multivariate estimates reveal that the effects of female heads and college education both increase the Gini to a much greater extent than the progressivity of federal income taxes decreases it. The effects of college education and female headed families on inequality have grown larger across time, while the influence of age has declined. We find that the effects of race on inequality have changed little over the 1976 to 1989 period.", (excerpt)

"This paper investigates the relationship between the internal migration of native-born workers and flows of immigrants to the United States using the 1980 and 1990 U.S. Census Bureau microsamples.... Based on the estimation of three sets of regression models for five overlapping samples of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States and five mutually exclusive segments of the labor force, this analysis shows that the finding of a significant linkage between internal migration and immigration depends critically on the empirical experiment used. In direct opposition to previous published research, we conclude that net migration of the native born for metropolitan areas is either positively related or unrelated to immigration. Our models show that the net migration loss of unskilled native workers from metropolitan areas is probably a function of those cities' population size rather than immigrant flow to them. We conclude that the net migration loss of native-born workers from large metropolitan areas is more likely the result of industrial restructuring than of competition with immigrants.", (excerpt)

"This paper investigates the commonly asserted proposition that long term economic changes have put the family in a financial bind. Structural parameters of a family utility model are obtained by estimating simultaneous labor supply functions for a two-earner household. We find evidence indicating that the average 1990s two-earner family would prefer to receive the 1980s real wage package (were it available) instead of the real wage package it actually faces. The degree to which the 1990s family is worse off (in terms of the changes in the real wage package) is roughly equivalent to an hour of leisure per week." The data are from the 1993 Current Population Survey and concern the United States., (excerpt)

"Have regional disparities in Canada changed over the past thirty years? This paper assesses the robustness of earlier findings of convergence in the levels and growth rates of provincial per capita GDP, and then estimates the extent to which interprovincial and international migration is being influenced by regional differences in incomes and employment.", (excerpt)

"This paper presents the results of an ecological analysis of the relationship between infant mortality and economic status in a metropolitan aggregate comprised of six of the larger cities in Ohio covering the years 1979-81 and 1989-91.... Results of the analysis revealed, first of all, that there continues to be a clear and pronounced inverse association between the aggregate economic status of an area and the probability that a newborn infant will not survive the first year of life. There are, however, some noteworthy race-cause differences....Only one cause, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, stood out as having a generally consistent and very strong inverse relationship with economic status.", (excerpt)

"This paper uses an economic index to describe the hierarchical structure of the national settlement system and describes the changes among the sixties, eighties and nineties. We found great territorial changes for the first period. The conclusions proposed are that there is a decentralisation at [the] national level, but at the same time, there is a centralisation at [the] regional level." (SUMMARY IN ENG), (excerpt)

"This paper uses pooled 1971, 1981, and 1986 Canadian census data to evaluate the extent to which (1) the earnings of Canadian immigrants at the time of immigration fall short of the earnings of comparable Canadian-born individuals, and (2) immigrants' earnings grow more rapidly over time than those of the Canadian born. Variations in the labour market assimilation of immigrants according to their gender and country of origin are also analysed. The results suggest that recent immigrant cohorts have had more difficulty being assimilated into the Canadian labour market than earlier ones, an apparent consequence of recent changes in Canadian immigration policy, labour market discrimination against visible minorities, and the prolonged recession of the early 1980s." (SUMMARY IN FRE), (excerpt)

"This paper applies a three-level nested logit model to the micro data of the 1981 Canadian census to explain the 1976-81 interprovincial migration choices of the non-natives (those whose province of residence was different from province of birth), aged 20 to 44, by personal factors and provincial attributes. Important personal factors include mother tongue, level of education, family type, and age. Influential provincial attributes include economic variables (income level, employment growth, and unemployment), distance, and cultural similarity. The main finding is that not only onward migrants but also return migrants were sensitive to the interprovincial variation in economic opportunities." (SUMMARY IN FRE), (excerpt)

"This paper begins by reviewing some conceptual frameworks for the study of female mortality and indicates some of its application problems. Next it presents results of mortality of women in reproductive-age classified by age, causes of death, and socio-demographic traits (marital status, schooling, and occupation) for ten states [in Mexico] differentiated according to level of development and well-being. The data suggests differences according to age, marital status, and schooling. Finally, testing of the mutual independence and partial independence hypotheses indicates that age, marital status, and schooling correlate to the degree of development of each state." (SUMMARY IN ENG), (excerpt)

"This paper rejects Veugelers and Klassen's initial suggestion that greater concern with demographic considerations might provide a useful explanation for their empirical finding of a post-1989 change in the unemployment-immigration linkage [in Canada] and offers alternative explanations consistent with economic and, especially, sociological-political theories. It shows how elements of Hawkins's (1988) ¿bureaucratic control' and Simmons and Keohane's (1991) ¿political legitimacy' theories can be combined to explain both continuity and change in Canada's postwar immigration policy.", (excerpt)

"This study examines the extent to which internal migration among recent immigrants to Canada is affected and constrained by characteristics related to admission. By examining measures of information and personal ties, it may be possible to establish that migration behavior is rational regardless of economic incentives." It is suggested that "internal migration in the first year after arrival is strongly affected by characteristics such as admission status, destination at arrival, reason for immigration, and area of origin. With increasing length of residence in Canada, though, the effect of these admission factors on internal migration behavior diminishes." This is a revised version of a paper originally presented at the 1992 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America., (excerpt)

"This paper investigates the hypothesis that ethnicity has spillover effects on the human capital accumulation process. It extends previous research by documenting the extent to which the relative importance of parental inputs and ethnic spillovers in the intergenerational transmission of skills differs both within and across immigrant and U.S.-born ethnic groups. Using data drawn from the General Social Surveys, the study documents that the second and third generations (i.e., the children and grandchildren of immigrants) experience relatively more rapid economic advancement than do other generations, and that ethnic spillovers play a stronger role in households which are at the extremes of the skill distribution.", (excerpt)

"This paper examines the impact of immigrants on the income of various groups of resident workers in the United States and Europe. Our approach features the use of a production technology incorporating education, experience, and unskilled labor as inputs.... We find that in both United States and European production, education, unskilled labor and experience are complementary inputs. Based on these results, simulations of the impact of immigration on residents are carried out. The absolute magnitude of these effects is found to be very small.", (excerpt)

"The present paper shows that in the case of temporary migration the optimal investment into country specific human capital should be lower than in the case of permanent migration. Investments may not be sufficient to allow migrants' earnings to catch up with those of native workers." Earnings profiles of temporary migrants in West Germany are analyzed and compared with those of permanent migrants in Australia, Canada, and the United States. Data concern the 1980s., (excerpt)

"The objective of this paper is to test whether fiscally induced migration occurs in Canada; that is, whether interprovincial migration flows are influenced by government tax and expenditure policies. In order to do so, a multinominal logit model of migration is developed in which individuals choose to live in the province where their utility would be highest. The model is estimated using aggregate data for the period 1962-81.... The results indicate that migration is influenced by provincial government spending, trough the magnitude and direction of the effect differs with the type of government spending.... The implication of these results is that intergovernmental transfer payments and provincial natural resource revenues also have the potential to influence migration flows in Canada." (SUMMARY IN FRE), (excerpt)

The article presents information about the book "Structural Change and Labor Market Flexibility: Experience in Selected OECD Economies," edited by Horst Siebert. Nine papers in the book arises from one component of the research program entitled "The Social Market Economy: Challenges and Conceptual Response," which assess structural changes in the labor markets of various countries in North America, Japan, and Europe, and the policy responses to these changes. Papers in the book discuss structural changes and the British labor market; labor rigidities and the performance of the French economy; intersectoral labor reallocations and flexibility mechanisms in post-war Italy; sectoral structural change and the state of the labor market in Sweden; structural changes and barriers in the Danish labor market; the Dutch response to dynamic challenges in the labor market; the structure and performance of the U.S. labor market.

"This paper focuses on the determinants of the likelihood and timing of remarriage for women: which characteristics of women and their first unions are conducive to quick remarriage and which are associated with low remarriage probabilities?... By analyzing the role of transferable marriage-specific capital as an asset, the present paper suggests a reinterpretation of past results and shows that such human capital constitutes an important component of women's gains from remarriage....[It] studies the determinants of remarriage separately for white and black women. The effects of the duration of first union and the presence of children from that union on remarriage probabilities are found to differ by race, results which can be interpreted within the context of the model developed here." Data from the 1982 U.S. National Survey of Family Growth are used to test the model., (excerpt)

"Using vector-autoregressions...this paper shows that fertility moves countercyclically over the business cycle....[It] shows that the United States fertility is not governed by a deterministic trend as was assumed by previous studies. Rather, fertility evolves around a stochastic trend. It is shown that a bivariate analysis between fertility and unemployment yields a procyclical picture of fertility. However, when one considers the effects on fertility of early marriages and the divorce behavior as well as economic activity, fertility moves countercyclically.", (excerpt)

The relationship between household characteristics and household expenditure in the United States is explored. "The basic hypothesis of this paper is that socio-demographic characteristics of households are important determinants of their expenditure patterns as are price and income variables.", (excerpt)

"This paper outlines a model which simultaneously characterizes economically induced migration and discretionary migration [in the United States]. The model is articulated for a multiregional system, and an attempt is made to characterize simultaneously demographic and economic change.", (excerpt)

"This paper uses combinations of full brothers, half brothers, and fathers and sons to measure the effect of common family background on a household's income and wealth. While the data are drawn from a nineteenth-century [U.S.] population, the intraclass correlation for income ranges from .13 to .18, which is similar to that found in modern samples. Intraclass correlations for wealth are significantly higher (.18-.35) than are those for income. Intraclass correlations of half brothers compared to those for full brothers suggest that fathers play a dominant role in the transmission of the common family effect. When unobserved background is decomposed into individual and family effects, the individual effect dominates the family effect for income, while the family effect dominates the individual effect for wealth." A comment by Sherwin Rosen is included (pp. 80-2)., (excerpt)

"This paper seeks to (1) identify socioeconomic variables that are expected to generate fertility differentials; (2) hypothesize the direction and magnitude of the effect of each variable by reference to a demand-for-children model; and (3) test empirically the model using evidence from Costa Rica. The estimates are obtained from a ten-percent systematic random sample of all Costa Rican individual-family households. There are 15,924 families in the sample...." The authors specifically seek "to capture the effects of changing relative prices and available income and time constraints on parental preferences for children. Least-squares estimates show statistically significant relationships between household fertility and opportunity cost of time, parental education, occurrence of an extended family, medical care, household sanitation, economic sector of employment, and household stock of nonhuman capital.", (excerpt)

Changes in the relationship between population factors and the development process in Mexico from 1940 to the present are reviewed. The authors show how the development that occurred up to about 1970 both absorbed and encouraged rapid population growth. They then describe how the emergence of problems concerning this relationship led to the development of a population policy during the 1970s. "The paper then takes up the implementation of that policy and the determinants of the fertility decline that took place afterwards, and closes with a brief review of the implications that demographic considerations have for Mexico's future." (SUMMARY IN ENG), (excerpt)

The authors attempt to determine the net effect of city size on quality of life by developing a welfare measure of urbanization. "The estimation procedure suggested in the theoretical part of the paper (section II) is implemented in the empirical part (section III) using 1980 census data from the [U.S.] PUMS (Public Use Micro Data Sample). The results indicate there is no single optimal city size, but rather a worst city size, and about 90 percent of the U.S. population reside in cities smaller than worst city size. If quality of life is related to the degree of urbanization, then long-term trends in the locational distribution of the population should be accounted for in any welfare-oriented measure of national income. One application of our results is, as indicated, the derivation of a GNP welfare deflator reflecting changes in the degree of urbanization (section IV). The findings suggest an urban deflator on the order of six to seven percentage points, which is steadily increasing at a rate of about half a percentage point per decade.", (excerpt)

"This paper uses a general overlapping generations model to analyze social security. Rather than focusing on intertemporal price and income considerations, however, the paper focuses on the effect of contemporaneous (same period) prices and income. The analysis shows that the old-age dependency ratio acts as a shadow price for old-age benefits. With this new shadow price, the equilibrium price and quantity of social security benefits and the level of the payroll tax rate are determined in a demand-supply framework with individual utility maximization. Three explicit demand functions (intergenerational contracts) are analyzed. The model is tested using [U.S.] time series data for the social security Old-Age and Survivors (OASI) program.", (excerpt)

The purpose of theis paper is to examine the previously reported relationships between family background, marital happiness, and voluntary childlessness in light of data collected from samples of intentionally childless couples and parents in Winnipeg. The findings show that, contrary to earlier assertions, family background factors such as birth order, size of family of orientation, mother's employment, and perceived parental happiness do not predispose individuals to voluntary childlessness. Further, while the reported level of marital happiness is higher among childless couples, the sources of marital dissatisfaction among parents are not always children.

The basic ideas underlying the analysis in this paper are that family size can be viewed as an economic life cycle decision and that there are decision trade-offs among fertility, consumption, and leisure. A micro-model of life cycle choice is developed and embedded in an economic-demographic macro-model. The macro-model is then used in a series of computer experiments to assess the effects on the population and the economy of changes in household preferences for children. The experiments include factual and counterfactual simulations of Canadian historical demographic experience and simulations of alternative future scenarios. The analysis and conclusions have general relevance for countries that have been through a fertility boom-and-bust sequence.