IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/shf/wpaper/2011024.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Aid and Fertility: What Does the Cross-Country Evidence Show?

Author

Listed:
  • David Cuberes

    (Department of Economics, The University of Sheffield)

  • Kevin Tsui

    (The John E. Walker Department of Economics, Clemson University)

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of foreign aid on fertility rates in recipient countries using Rajan and Subramanian’s (2008) cross-sectional and panel methods. Our cross-section results suggest that foreign aid has a positive effect on fertility. Interestingly, social sector aid (but not economic aid) is responsible for this demographic effect. The panel evidence confirms the positive effect of foreign aid on total fertility rates, and that social aid is more relevant than economic aid. Given that the literature has found no robust relationship between foreign aid and economic growth, our findings raise the possibility of an aid-induced population poverty trap.

Suggested Citation

  • David Cuberes & Kevin Tsui, 2011. "Aid and Fertility: What Does the Cross-Country Evidence Show?," Working Papers 2011024, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:shf:wpaper:2011024
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.shef.ac.uk/economics/research/serps/articles/2011_024.html
    File Function: First version, 2011
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. van de Walle, Dominique & Mu, Ren, 2007. "Fungibility and the flypaper effect of project aid: Micro-evidence for Vietnam," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 667-685, November.
    2. Blackorby, Charles & Bossert, Walter & Donaldson, David, 1999. "Foreign aid and population policy: some ethical considerations," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 203-232, August.
    3. Galor, Oded, 2005. "From Stagnation to Growth: Unified Growth Theory," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 171-293, Elsevier.
    4. Carl-Johan Dalgaard & Henrik Hansen & Finn Tarp, 2004. "On The Empirics of Foreign Aid and Growth," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(496), pages 191-216, June.
    5. Michael A. Clemens & Steven Radelet & Rikhil Bhavnani, 2004. "Counting chickens when they hatch: The short-term effect of aid on growth," International Finance 0407010, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Hansen, Henrik & Tarp, Finn, 2001. "Aid and growth regressions," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 547-570, April.
    7. Raghuram G. Rajan & Arvind Subramanian, 2008. "Aid and Growth: What Does the Cross-Country Evidence Really Show?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(4), pages 643-665, November.
    8. Boone, Peter, 1996. "Politics and the effectiveness of foreign aid," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 289-329, February.
    9. Chatterjee, Santanu & Giuliano, Paola & Kaya, Ilker, 2007. "Where Has All the Money Gone? Foreign Aid and the Quest for Growth," IZA Discussion Papers 2858, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. George Economides & Sarantis Kalyvitis & Apostolis Philippopoulos, 2008. "Does foreign aid distort incentives and hurt growth? Theory and evidence from 75 aid-recipient countries," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 134(3), pages 463-488, March.
    11. Hristos Doucouliagos & Martin Paldam, 2005. "Aid Effectiveness on Growth. A Meta Study," Economics Working Papers 2005-13, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    12. Kyriakos C. Neanidis, 2012. "Humanitarian Aid, Fertility and Economic Growth," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 79(313), pages 27-61, January.
    13. William Easterly, 2006. "Reliving the 1950s: the big push, poverty traps, and takeoffs in economic development," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 11(4), pages 289-318, December.
    14. Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), 2005. "Handbook of Economic Growth," Handbook of Economic Growth, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    15. Raghuram Rajan & Arvind Subramanian, 2007. "Does Aid Affect Governance?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 322-327, May.
    16. David N. Weil & Joshua Wilde, 2009. "How Relevant Is Malthus for Economic Development Today?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 255-260, May.
    17. David N. Weil & Oded Galor, 2000. "Population, Technology, and Growth: From Malthusian Stagnation to the Demographic Transition and Beyond," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 806-828, September.
    18. Anca Cotet & Kevin K. Tsui, 2010. "Resource Curse or Malthusian Trap? Evidence from Oil Discoveries and Extractions," Working Papers 201001, Ball State University, Department of Economics, revised Mar 2010.
    19. Leonid V. Azarnert, 2009. "Foreign Aid, Fertility and Population Growth:Evidence from Africa," Working Papers 2009-12, Bar-Ilan University, Department of Economics.
    20. Mr. Thierry Tressel & Mr. Alessandro Prati, 2006. "Aid Volatility and Dutch Disease: Is There a Role for Macroeconomic Policies?," IMF Working Papers 2006/145, International Monetary Fund.
    21. Leonid V. Azarnert, 2008. "Foreign Aid, Fertility and Human Capital Accumulation," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 75(300), pages 766-781, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ahmad, Khalil & Ali, Amjad & Irfan Chani, Muhammad, 2014. "Does sector specific foreign aid matter for fertility? An empirical analysis form Pakistan," MPRA Paper 72851, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Ahmad, Khalil & Ali , Amjad & Chani, Muhammd Irfan, 2014. "Does Foreign Aid to Social Sector Matter for Fertility Reduction? An Empirical Analysis for Pakistan," Bangladesh Development Studies, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), vol. 37(04), pages 65-76, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Temple, Jonathan R.W., 2010. "Aid and Conditionality," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4415-4523, Elsevier.
    2. Carl-Johan Dalgaard & Ola Olsson, 0. "Windfall Gains, Political Economy and Economic Development," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 17(suppl_1), pages -109.
    3. William Easterly, 2009. "Can the West Save Africa?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 373-447, June.
    4. Minoiu, Camelia & Reddy, Sanjay G., 2010. "Development aid and economic growth: A positive long-run relation," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 27-39, February.
    5. Felicitas Nowak-Lehmann & Axel Dreher & Dierk Herzer & Stephan Klasen & Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso, 2012. "Does foreign aid really raise per capita income? A time series perspective," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 45(1), pages 288-313, February.
    6. Paul A. Raschky & Manijeh Schwindt, 2016. "Aid, Catastrophes and the Samaritan's Dilemma," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 83(332), pages 624-645, October.
    7. Vasilakis, Chrysovalantis, 2017. "Fighting Poverty And Child Malnutrition: On The Design Of Foreign Aid Policies," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(8), pages 1935-1956, December.
    8. Dimitris K Christopoulos & Gregorios Siourounis & Irene Vlachaki, 2016. "Democratic Reforms, Foreign Aid and Production Inefficiency," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 84(3), pages 363-389, June.
    9. Wamboye, Evelyn & Adekola, Abel, 2013. "Foreign Aid, Legal Origin, Economic Growth and Africa’s Least Developed Countries," MPRA Paper 47846, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Simeon Djankov & Jose Montalvo & Marta Reynal-Querol, 2008. "The curse of aid," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 169-194, September.
    11. Sarantis Kalyvitis & Thanasis Stengos & Irene Vlachaki, 2012. "Are Aid Flows Excessive or Insufficient? Estimating the Growth Impact of Aid in Threshold Regressions," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 59(3), pages 298-315, July.
    12. Wamboye, Evelyn, 2012. "Quantity or quality? foreign aid implications on economic growth in least developed countries," MPRA Paper 39518, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Rajan, Raghuram G. & Subramanian, Arvind, 2011. "Aid, Dutch disease, and manufacturing growth," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 106-118, January.
    14. Neanidis, Kyriakos C. & Varvarigos, Dimitrios, 2009. "The allocation of volatile aid and economic growth: Theory and evidence," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 447-462, December.
    15. Felicitas Nowak-Lehmann D. & Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso & Dierk Herzer & Stephan Klasen & Axel Dreher, 2009. "In Search for a Long-run Relationship between Aid and Growth: Pitfalls and Findings," Ibero America Institute for Econ. Research (IAI) Discussion Papers 196, Ibero-America Institute for Economic Research.
    16. Keith Blackburn & Gonzalo F. Forgues-Puccio, 2011. "Foreign aid - a fillip for development or a fuel for corruption?," Centre for Growth and Business Cycle Research Discussion Paper Series 158, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    17. Lessmann, Christian & Markwardt, Gunther, 2012. "Aid, Growth and Devolution," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(9), pages 1723-1749.
    18. Selaya, Pablo & Thiele, Rainer, 2008. "Aid and sectoral labour productivity," Kiel Working Papers 1468, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    19. Łukasz Marć, 2015. "The impact of aid on total government expenditures: New evidence on fungibility," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2015-010, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    20. Łukasz Marć, 2017. "The Impact of Aid on Total Government Expenditures: New Evidence on Fungibility," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(3), pages 627-663, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    foreign aid; population growth; Malthusian traps;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F35 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Aid
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:shf:wpaper:2011024. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Mike Crabtree (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/desheuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.