Endogenous fertility in a growth model with public and private health expenditures

We build an overlapping-generations model that incorporates endogenous fertility choices, in addition to public and private expenditures on health. Following the seminal analysis of Bhattacharya and Qiao (J Econ Dyn Control 31:2519–2535, <CitationRef CitationID="CR2">2007</CitationRef>) we assume that the effect of public health investment is complementary to private health expenditures. We find that this effect reinforces the positive impact of the capital stock on aggregate saving. Furthermore, we show that this complementarity can provide an additional explanation behind a salient feature of demographic transition; that is, the fertility decline along the process of economic growth. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2013