Endogenous Fertility, Endogenous Growth and Public Pension System: Should We Switch from a PAYG to a Fully-Funded System?

This paper studies the implications of state pension plan reform on fertility and on growth. It extends the Grossman and Yanagawa (1993) endogenous growth framework by incorporating altruism, making fertility endogenous. We investigate the effect on long-run growth of a switch from a Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) pension system to a fully-funded system. We show that a PAYG pension system is associated with a lower fertility rate than a fully-funded system. This lower fertility in turn increases the rate of growth. Hence, switching from a PAYG system to a fully-funded system may be harmful, especially for developing countries in which limited resources are heavily stressed by high fertility rates. In addition, we propose a hypothetical pension system, the Saving Subsidy Program (SSP), which would yield a higher growth rate than the PAYG system. The SSP consists of a minimum benefit level for each retiree and of a subsidy to private savings.